New to NAS world - how to check vulnerability..

[Dindale]

Hello all...

I finally justified buying (okay - justified to the wife) an off-the-shelf NAS after a drive failure nearly wiped out 8 years of photos of our children. I ended up buying a Thecus N4100PRO (mostly because of price) and have been happy with the ease of configuration and noise level (nearly silent). My concern/issue: I have a basic understanding of network security/routers and have everything in our house behind a router and running (resident on PC's) a firewall of some kind. I'm concerned about the NAS. What precautions can I take to make sure it's protected and how do I recognize when it has been breached (general signs to look for)? Is there anything I can install to look for unauthorized intrusions? My main concern will be for the day when I trust the NAS with our photos and videos - and stop using a variety of USB drives for backup. I'd hate to have everything wiped out by someone screwing around for fun.

Any help woul dbe appreciated.

Regards,

Keith

 

[jdabbs]

You could run a nmap scan against it to see what ports are open.

In your case though, I'd just put in an access restriction for that device at your router. Eliminating unnecessary exposure to the Internet is easier than trying to lock down a device.

 

[thiggins]

Keith,
You should never trust your data to a single device, RAID or otherwise. RAID is not for backup. (See Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID.)

I strongly suggest that you have a backup of any data that you store on the NAS.

If you are not opening any ports on your router to the Internet and you have auto-updated anti-Virus / anti-malware / anti-spam apps running on all computers, you should be in good shape. But make sure you have those backups!

 

[Dindale]

Thank you

Thanks guys for the advice. I appreciate your time.

Keith