With constant change driving enhanced public services, greater access services, and productivity growth, there is a significant increase in the need to safeguard against the breach of security and network uptime optimization.
How can the government improve uptime and network security with regards to the infrastructure?
Here is what the Director for Enterprise Networks, Global & Strategic Accounts for the Asia Pacific at Corning Optical Communications, Dennis Kom had to say regarding this matter.
An analysis of recent trends suggests that there is a significant rise in the use of cloud-based systems for core operations of businesses. Ensuring safety for this system is an on-going challenge as the applications are being hosted outside the data center. This makes it difficult for network administrators to analyze and track real-time performance of the network.
Avoiding the discrepancy and data breaches of operations of government agencies like social security, healthcare, defense, and police is the top concern as failure to do so can be catastrophic. These agencies store vast quantities of sensitive data that can do tremendous harm if they fall into the wrong hands. To avoid such outcome, the concerned department must always keep a lookout for such attacks.
How can administrators contribute to identifying security breaches?
Administrators can adopt a prevention centric approach with regard to monitoring the network. This can assist in error detection along with giving access to utilization information and performance while ensuring it produces desired results.
The two most popular technologies used in network monitoring systems are TAP (Traffic Access Point) and SPAN (Switch Port ANalyser) also known as port mirroring.
How to choose the right one?
You can choose the technology that enables you to monitor your network without interfering with your live applications.
A passive technology like a Tap allows you to do just that as it does not subject the live network with any additional load. This is because it does not replicate the signal but splits it. Thus a portion of this signal can be taken offline for inspection without disrupting the live network.
A SPAN port, on the other hand, needs a network engineer to configure. It is crucial to disable the SPAN port during a refresh to avoid network performance issues like a ‘bridging loop.’
What is the economical choice?
Apart from the expenses incurred to employ a network engineer for the configuration the SPAN port, the cost associated with monitoring increases exponentially with higher data rates. For instance, a 10G switch port costs considerably higher than a 1G switch port whereas, a 1G tap port costs the same as a 10G or even 40G tap port. For this very reason, the preferred solution for higher data rates is optical tapping.
Any other tips?
It is recommended to use an MTP connector at the end of the Tap module to attain maximum flexibility when designing a structured network of cables. This can help in optimizing the cost in the form of a reduction in the use of monitoring equipment and by reducing the risk of patching errors.
Related Post: Optimizing Networks for Efficiency and Security
