Network security is important to protect digital assets, ensure data integrity and confidentiality, and address evolving threats. Key best practices for IT network security include: 1) Implementing firewalls and segmenting networks to control traffic and limit damage from breaches, 2) Maintaining up-to-date software and enabling automatic updates, 3) Evaluating vendor security and ensuring supply chain guidelines. Additional practices are providing security awareness training, conducting regular audits and monitoring, encrypting sensitive data, backing up important information, and testing backup processes. Network security helps preserve data integrity, prevent unauthorized access to information, authenticate users, monitor for intrusions, and support disaster recovery and business continuity.