Whether you have one machine connected to the Internet or ten thousand, keeping your network secure should be a top priority. You patch your web server and are mindful of your firewall configuration, but is your site really secure? How do you check it?

Sure, you can spend spend many tens of thousands of dollars for a professional audit by a top-shelf security firm such as Foundstone, but in many cases, with a little bit of insight and a set of open source tools, you can find and fix the real trouble spots yourself. Here's a hands-on introduction to finding security risks on your network.

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