Ahead of the Game

 The converged information network in Harris County, Texas, serves as the Internet service provider for the county government. Operated by the Harris County Information Technology Center (ITC), the network supports voice over IP (VoIP), video and high-speed access for more than 275 remote locations, e-commerce applications, and wireless local area network and radio convergence for the entire county. With so many missioncritical
systems relying on the ITC's converged information utility, the network cannot be compromised without serious consequences. With more than 16,000 users whose actions cannot be controlled by the ITC, the county has learned security must be integrated
within the network.

The county relies on Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch Chassis LAN switches equipped with the Alcatel-Lucent OmniVista 2770 Network Management System, which comprises the Quarantine Manager module and Alcatel-Lucent Access Guardian, to detect and quash threats before they harm network operations. Plus, this solution performs in the face of intense user-traffic. The network managed more than 3 billion Web page hits and more than 61 million e-mails during 2006. That year, the ITC thwarted nearly 80 million Internet attacks and processed 1.8 billion secure non-PC-based transactions. The solution's combination of content management tools, firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPSs) and other security appliances were critical to that achievement. Built-In Security The network switches and security appliances provided by Alcatel-Lucent enable county technicians to detect abnormal network activity and quarantine the user or affected area of the network, stopping the problem before it can propagate. "When switching first came out, the whole idea was how fast you can move traffic. But the thing nobody thought about was: If you get a virus, an attack, what you just managed to do was move infected data at a million bits per second through your network. There was nothing to stop it," said Keith Bryant, division manager for networking and security at the ITC. "The type of hardware we have now allow us to stop it."

The OmniVista 2770 can receive feedback from other security devices, such as firewalls and IPSs, and can automatically quarantine the affected network area or alert network managers, depending on how managers choose to configure it. "If we get a rogue device, I can take that device out of the system. If harmful traffic goes past the device where it's in an area supported by a port, I can take the port out. If it goes past there and travels to the switch level, I can take the switch out," said Bryant. He said the process typically happens without other network users being the wiser. "The biggest thing this solution gives end-users is stability," said
Harris County CIO Steven Jennings. "With that stability, they often never know when a problem actually is impacting the network. We have a lot of automatic rollover capability in our network from ports and different switches and systems. If the system senses the network is having a problem in one area, it automatically rolls over to a different path, and the customer never knows his primary path is taken out of service. "It has worked very well for us to be able to notify other departments, let them go down to the infected device and tell them what to do with it." The solution also includes the Alcatel-Lucent Access Guardian authentication platform, which can screen devices and gives them access to the network areas they're pre-authorized to enter.

The Harris County Alcatel-Lucent solution also centralizes all county network management. "This approach really allows us to become network-centric and do network-centric management," Jennings said. "We're not dependent on multiple management stations to review only portions of how the network flows." He said centralization enabled a more comprehensive, proactive approach. "We can manage outages from a single location," Jennings said. "We can see and do trend analysis, allowing us to adjust bandwidth to meet our needs. In the same center, we can also watch security, and if a