CASE STUDY

Case Study

Case Study

Introduction

The networking environment at Central University presents a unique set of challenges. Central University is comprised of ten separate colleges (e.g., business, arts, journalism), hundreds perhaps thousands of faculty members and administrative staff, tens of thousands of students, as well as thousands of servers and computers that may or may not have adequate security protection. All of these users and devices are connected to the network and are all potential targets of network attacks. Network threats are everywhere and not just from the outside world of spammers, hackers, and thieves. Profound network threats also reside within the campus environment originating from professors and students alike. Combining the threats posed by both external and internal sources with a large multipurpose university network creates a daunting challenge for network administrators trying to enable interoperability and communications but at the same time secure their network (Anderson, 2006).

As most people know a network is a collection of computers or related devices which can intercommunicate across some transmission medium. A transmission medium can be set up with suitable 'wiring' or 'cabling' but it can also be set up using wireless, infra red, laser and other 'through the airways' technologies (Zyda, 1999). The computers may be connected locally within a room or within a building in which case we might talk about a local area network. They could also be connected globally as is the case of the Internet. Some organizations have their computers linked together in groups of 'local' networks and the networks may link to each other to form what is called an intranet. Networks and intranets tend to be 'secure' groupings of computers which can only be accessed by individuals with appropriate authorization. The Internet on the other hand provides a means of access for individuals to computers ...