Additionally, several software vendors developed security response processes to investigate and fix vulnerabilities. Make sure you check for new bulletins frequently. It does no good to install security fixes on a computer that was never secured to begin with. The time to lock down a machine is before it's ever connected to the network. Security checklists from software vendors make it easy to lock down department machines.
Eternal vigilance is the price of security.
Sometimes neither security patches nor machine configurations can totally prevent attacks, particularly those not invalid despite being malicious. Your weapon in these cases is the event logs, which let you gauge the health of your systems and determine the right course of action to keep them safe. Be careful when configuring the event logs because you can easily audit so many events that you will exceed your ability to analyze the data. Carefully plan what events you need to log. Finally, keep in mind that the data won't do any good unless you use it.