Common Threats to Router and Switch Physical & Mitigation

There are several physical threats in both router and switch when it comes to implementation of that device. It can be categorized as four categories. This includes hardware threats, environmental threats, electrical threats and maintenance threats.

In hardware threat, the hardware can be damaged due to act of mischief or deliberate act. To mitigate this threat, the organization shall think of ways to minimize any damage. The organization can consider limiting the number of point of entry to the server room to minimize any damage done. This includes allowing only authorized users to gain entry to the server room. Besides that, logging of every entry is also important to personal accountability. Security camera is also important because it serve as deterrent purpose (Temasek Polytechnic, n.d.).

In environmental threat, overheated router and switch will damage the equipment. Hence there is a need to “control” these environmental factors. These include air-conditioning, humidity control and environmental alarm system as well as recording to inform the helpdesk when the server has a high temperature (Temasek Polytechnic, n.d.).

In electrical threat, abrupt power outage might crash the router and switch. Therefore, by installing Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) will help to provide electrical supply ranging from 5 to 15 minutes (“Uninterruptible power,” 2012). In this short period of time, the technician will be able to shut down the server in a rightful manner (Temasek Polytechnic, n.d.).

In maintenance-related threat, we can limit any damage done due to maintenance-related work such as poor cabling (Sud & Edelman, 2003).  As a result, there is a need to provide label for important cables. Besides that, providing additional cables for every router and switch will helps to ensure high availability of the network.

Figure 1 (Cables in the server room (Temasek Polytechnic, n.d.))

Reference

Sud, R., & Edelman, K. (2003, December). Securing Cisco routers. Retrieved May 3, 2012, from SearchSecurity: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/feature/Securing-Cisco-routers

Temasek Polytechnic. (n.d.). Basic router and switch security. Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.

Uninterruptible power supply. (2012, April 19). Retrieved May 3, 2012, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply#Ferro-resonant