Securing and Designing Network Infrastructure for a Business

Evaluating Proposed Network Infrastructure

Computer Network is assumed to be the backbone of any company, hence securing and maintaining security in this day of age needs some consideration which should be based on technical and analytical dimension, your company based in London is opening a new branch in Berlin, a third party company in Berlin proposed new network infrastructure for the Local area network in the branch, with an internet connection to provide a Wide Area Network connectivity to London HQ.

The network infrastructure schematic diagram shown in figure 1, illustrates the solution provided by the third party company with the following consideration:

• The third party company decided not to segment the network into many VLAN due to the number of user, the number of users in the branch is 55 users.
• The third party company as well decided not to allocate server room as each department will keep their server close to the users as possible for ease of management and hence HR server will be close to the HR users and so is the finance etc.
• The backup services will be performed automatically on an external Hard Disk Drive positioned as close to each server as possible and will be secured in a local cabinet.

The company director expressed concern and asked you to evaluate the proposed third party network and design a better security solutions adding a consideration for IoT devices and to monitor network and secure network components. The company consists of HR, Finance, Admin and users group, the servers needed are email and web servers adding to the local File Servers located to each department, Table 1, shows the users distribution.

Your director asked you to evaluate the given proposed network showing any flaws and reasoning, as well as the impact of the flaws, in addition you are to design a new secured network including:

Task 1

• Discuss and evaluate the given proposed network, in terms of Security, Availability, and Scalability etc.., analysing the potential impact of a third party proposed network design in terms of possible attacks and threats to the business.
• Propose any special and or new components to improve security both at physical and logical security.
• Thoroughly investigate and evaluate the network design and its associated IT security risks and research existing organisational security measures and controls to mitigate the risks.

Task 2

• Design new network incorporating all necessary network components including all reasoning, analysis and evaluation in choosing the network components.
• Base on your finding and your solutions provide a high-level security design for Company XYZ in a report format. The report document should not be more than 3000 words.
• Propose a maintenance and troubleshooting documentation.
• Reflect on the effectiveness of your design in meeting the requirements of company XYZ and the lessons learn in view of the outcomes and obstacles.

Task 3: Lab Work

• Using your high-level design simulate and configure your selected technologies to meet the security design requirements.

• To proof that your design is working according to the design requirement develop a test plan and test your solutions. Show the process of testing the network and include the test result in relation to; Access Control, traffic encryption etc.

NB: For Task 5 of the coursework please attach the running configurations of your networking devices in one document and submit it including the topology diagram as well.

Part 2: This part is worth 20% of the total marks

Task Demonstration of work

• As part of the overall assessment of this assignment, you will need to demonstrate your work by presentating your security design solution. You will be expected to provide evidence of the artefacts you have produced. If necessary, you should arrange to bring a suitable laptop to the venue. You can use any presentation package of your choice to demonstrate your work. The presentation will last 10-15 minutes. You will be marked on content, presentation style and clarity of delivery.

NB: Do not use more than 15 slides.

Note: The coursework should be submitted as one document in a report format in final submission. For the simulation part of the coursework, copy the running configurations of the networking device in one document and submit it together with the topology diagram of your solution.

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