Understanding Risks on the Internet

I’m betting you’ve used the Internet once or twice, but it’s still worth mentioning here. It’s the largest network in the world and continues to grow by leaps and bounds with no end in sight.

Several things have been mentioned about the Internet throughout this book, and it’s worth consolidating them here in the context of network security zones:

The Internet Is the Riskiest Security Zone Attackers from anywhere in the world can attack computers on the Internet, and they do. In 2009 and 2010, malware authors created 20 million new strains of malicious software (an average of 63,000 a day). Infected systems join massive botnets and participate in attacks on other computers.

All Internet Addresses Are Public Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used on the Internet are public IP addresses. In other words, they are accessible from any other computer with access to the Internet. In comparison, IP addresses on internal networks are private.