Preventing a hack attack

I work with a lot of attorneys who have a great deal of confidential information on their systems. Recently one of my clients was involve in a very high profile case. For some reason, (if I told you why, they would have to kill me) the client started to worry about someone hacking into his system and stealing his data.

His fears, real or just good old paranoia, started a discussion about online security and firewalls, etc. The client was afraid that someone could hack into his system and get to his files. He went so far as to remove the files from his system, in order to protect them.

Most of my clients are small businesses and small offices. The average size is 10 systems. Most only have their routers as a firewall for protection from incoming threats.

Is that enough? For the majority of my clients, I think it is. Unless we have opened a port in the router, then it is going to be really hard for a hacker to target a specific machine on the network.

I do have a few clients who have opened ports for remote access, using either NetOP or Terminal Services from Microsoft. On most of these systems, we have moved from the standard port, 3389, to confuse anyone pinging the ip address.

My suggestion to my client who was worried about his data was to put bars on the office windows. No not on MS Office, nor on MS Windows, the window through which a petty thief would through a brick and then steal the secretaries computer that has all the data on it.

Let me know what you think,

Marc