Network Security: Stand & Deliver

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Network Security: Stand & Deliver

9/26/2006

By Matt Villano

It’s time to strengthen network defenses, but which solutions really work? Take your cues from these campus technologists, and take notes.

Network Security October is national Cyber Security Awareness Month (visit the National Cyber Security Alliance), and for the world of higher education, that means it’s high time to take a look at defense systems and plan for the future.

Clearly, more planning is needed now than ever before. According to the majority of IT market research firms, phishing and identity theft have leapfrogged spam and spyware as top concerns; viruses and e-mail worms are at an all-time high; and other affronts to the network (such as distributed denial of service— DDoS—and zombie, or “botnet,” attacks) are occurring with greater and greater frequency. Even hackers are getting in on the act: A recent USA Today review of 109 computer-related security breaches reported by 76 college campuses since January 2005 found that 70 percent involved hacking of one form or another.

Faced with this multitude of threats, security administrators across higher education are fighting back on four major fronts: the perimeter, inside the network (internal), e-mail, and the administrative level. While perimeter defenses revolve around next-generation firewalls, internal network strategies focus on something called “cooperative enforcement” to make sure endpoints are secure. E-mail security is its own beast altogether, and at the administrative level, security experts are implementing a mix of penetrationtesting and security-event-management tools to identify and repair security problems proactively. These are groundbreaking security strategies that work.

Fortifying the Perimeter

Talk about headaches. Security administrators at West Virginia University were reaching for the aspirin just about every day last year, as the campus network was constantly under attack by unwanted and malicious network traffic, including viruses and worms. Timothy Williams, WVU’s director of telecommunications and network operations, remembers that at one point, his IT team incurred a significant drop in staff productivity due to a required focus on cleaning computer systems of these infections. These technologists needed serious help in fighting the threats they faced, but they didn’t want a solution that would compromise network performance.

Finally, the WVU team settled on three perimeter devices from Fortinet. The devices, FortiGate 3600s, were positioned at the internet gateway to scan all traffic coming into and going out of the campus network. Administrators programmed the tools to flag all traffic with viruses, intrusions, and other security threats. Because the tools are powered by application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) microchips specifically designed to perform security checks, they were able to parse through web traffic in no time. Williams says his team reaped the benefits of this new approach almost immediately.