The overlooked hardware vulnerabilities in enterprise networks

Typically, hackers will gravitate to the weakest points in an enterprise network, and since networks by their very nature require a certain level of openness to allow traffic to flow through the network, such exploitable hardware vulnerabilities are the most attractive to hackers. Therefore, it is critical to identify and correct these vulnerabilities before they become a real problem.

[[195869]]

Application-related vulnerabilities usually receive a lot of attention, while hardware vulnerabilities are often overlooked. Emerging user demands have led vendors to implement measures to address this shortcoming. However, when hardware vulnerabilities are detected, they usually require vendors to write special code for the firmware, which is actually more difficult than patching software.

For example, hardware such as wireless access points are very vulnerable to attack even when encryption is used. Like any other area in the enterprise, they need to be protected with multiple layers of security. In addition, the enterprise should have access points that can identify devices accessing the network. An effective password policy is also a must.

Edge devices and other SNMP managed devices can also become security holes that hackers can exploit. Cyber ​​attackers can compromise these devices to modify configurations and then infiltrate the network. Therefore, IT professionals need to regularly perform network vulnerability testing, not just treat it as a checklist item in compliance exercises.

Likewise, hackers often exploit vulnerabilities that come with commonly used network ports. Fortunately, there are many tools and services that can help enterprise IT teams find and fix these vulnerabilities.

What's more heartbreaking is that even security devices such as firewalls and security event management systems can be hacked. When vendors release fixes for their devices, hackers can try to exploit it by reverse engineering the fixes. Therefore, IT teams should pay special attention to hardware security issues when performing network activities such as patches or configuration changes.