Florida Technical College Security Software Recommendations Discussion

I’m working on a computer science question and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.

Given the following, describe how you would improve security for this system.

There is a system containing unencrypted sensitive information (Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, first names, last names, and credit card numbers). The system, running a Windows 2008 server, is used only by employees but is on the public Internet, as employees need to access the system from home. Authentication is provided by NTLM, using username and password. The machine is currently directly plugged into its own dedicated cable modem.

Can you recommend five ways we can improve the security of this system, given a $10,000 budget? We should make sure to recommend solutions for software, hardware, and network security improvements. The data is used by 15 users and is secured using a powerful system with decent authentication.