Economy Informatics, 1-4/2004 69 Physical Considerations for Designing Secure Networks Senior Lecturer Răzvan Daniel ZOTA, Ph.D. E-mail:
[email protected] During the past ten years or so networks’ vulnerabilities has increased continuously; the need for designing more and more secure networks it is a must in the present. One common secu- rity truism is that if you have physical access to a box, „all bets are off”. If an attacker has physical access to any networking device, like a computer, switch, router, firewall and so on, the security options are considerably reduced. The purpose of this article is to present design considerations for secure networks at the physical level. Keywords: Networking, Security, Security design, Physical Access, Distributed systems, Net- work security. Introduction Lock-and-key access 1 It is well known that if an attacker gain Key card access physical access to a networking device, this Key card access with turnstile fact may compromise dramatically the secu- Lock-and-Key Access rity options. Networking devices, with few The most common physical security control, exceptions, can have their passwords reset by particularly in smaller organizations, is tradi- attaching to their console port. Hosts can be tional lock-and-key access. For this method, booted with a special floppy disk or CD- individuals who need access to certain rooms ROM designed to circumvent most host se- or buildings are given keys for access. This curity on the device. The article do not cover option has the following benefits: physical security in detail and topics like site Generally, this is the cheapest option for selection or disaster recovery are not dis- small organizations.