Creating Robust IT Security and Efficiency by Reducing Infrastructure Complexity in Higher Education

IT systems and infrastructure have experienced a rapid change in complexity as a result of consolidating multimedia communication through one network (Internet Protocol convergence), moving from mainframes to client/server and implementation of web services. This has had a drastic effect on higher education IT resources. It has created a greater dependency on IT services as well as a disconnect between these innovations and the ability of the IT security professional to understand the entire stack well enough to secure it. The university's continued funding of antiquated infrastructure and systems has resulted in unnecessary expenses and hidden costs as it relates to security and efficiency. Reducing university system and infrastructure complexity by consolidating configuration, migration, management and maintenance of the hardware stack allows the organization to decrease the number of devices requiring setup, configuration and management while allowing for funding flexibility and realizing cost reductions. Further, system management efficiency allows the IT administrative and security professional to focus on more than just application configuration management strategies and user authorization potentially resulting in increased security. Implementation of virtualization through the Cisco UCS (Unified Computing System) coupled with Oracle's RAC (Real Application Clusters), VMware's enterprise software and SAN technology resulted in complexity and cost reductions. While specific security, efficiency and capacity goals were met, virtualization brought about new security issues.