Chapter 4. Network Security Design

This chapter describes the concepts that relate to network security and includes the following sections:

• Making the Business Case

• Hacking

• Vulnerabilities

• Threats

• Mitigating Technologies

• SAFE Campus Design

Not long ago, the campus network's sole purpose was to provide connectivity. Nowadays, the campus network is an intricate part of business success, providing productivity tools in every part of the infrastructure. Therefore, sound security must protect the network to ensure high availability, integrity, and confidentiality of the data.

You can deal with risk in four ways: you accept it, you reduce it, you ignore it, or you transfer it. In network security, you seek to reduce the risk with the help of sound technologies and policies. This chapter focuses on reducing the risk and on the security technologies available in campus network design to mitigate vulnerabilities and threats.

Network security can be a complicated but exhilarating subject. Prior to jumping into the design aspects of network security, we review the basics of hacking and the equipment available to mitigate threats.

Note

Appendix B, "Network Fundamentals," includes material that we assume you understand before reading the rest of the book. Thus, we encourage you to review any of the material in Appendix B that you are not familiar with before reading the rest of this chapter.