Securing the Gold through Better Network Design: A Case Study

I was also given the responsibility of assessing, designing and implementing a network design that would allow us to offer more services to the customer base and to the field service personnel. Management wanted to deploy a web-based service for the customers to enable them to access their account information and the company was in need of a network overhaul. Upon initial evaluation, I found no firewall protection for the network. The domain controller and mail server were exposed to the Internet and therefore vulnerable and the company's database management system was not well secured. I felt that setting up the additional services in the existing infrastructure was not wise and presented my assessment to management. It was decided that a new network design should be implemented that would allow the company to offer additional services to the customers while providing for the security requirements. The new design was based on the Defense in Depth strategy.