Security All-Stars

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Appalachian State University

A studied approach to mitigating risk.

Like many universities, this Boone, N.C., school faced security challenges inherent in providing an open network while mitigating security risks.

A $3.5 million network upgrade to implement policy-driven switching, using Enterasys Networks' Distributed Forwarding Engine Switching architecture, Netsight Console and Policy Manager software, has let the school quickly pinpoint and alleviate malicious network attacks.

Using this policy-driven approach, the new network let the school this year register its more than 6,000 students in three days, without the usual hassles of worms and viruses. Plus, the project has saved countless hours troubleshooting and stabilizing the network, says David Hayler, network specialist with the university.

"If we see a problem with malicious traffic, we just write a policy and push it to the edge, and even if it is just an individual or two, we can quarantine them with just a few clicks of a mouse," he says.

Ochsner Health System

Examining databases for security faults

Faced with securing and auditing its distributed databases across its varied locations, New Orleans-based Ochsner Health System needed a technology that was not only bulletproof but automated, says Mark Maher, information security administrator for the hospital. The healthcare group became one of the earliest adopters of Application Security's AppDetective vulnerability assessment scanner, investing $10,000 in the software and reaping immediate benefits.

It not only provided unprecedented capabilities in performing penetration testing and identifying weak passwords in Ochsner's databases, but also discovered and secured databases that the group didn't know existed. Database audits that previously took weeks were whittled down to an hour, without compromising network or database availability or performance. The hospital gained the added benefit of increased protection of sensitive patient information, ensuring compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act regulations and saving at least $17,000 in audit costs.

“Our Oracle databases obviously contain important information of a
private nature. . . . We needed a tool to actively assess our Oracle environment and secure it where necessary.”
— Mark Maher, information security administrator, Ochsner Health System