BN305 Virtual Private Network (Group Assignment)
Description of the assessment:
In this assignment, each Group will be allocated a case study (only ONE Case Study) from below. The case studies focus on the design, implementation, and the evaluation of VPN business sites using Cisco devices.
Business Case Study #01:
Virtual Radiologic uses Cisco solutions to secure electronic patient information transmitted between hospitals and remote radiologists.
The largest radiology practice in the United States is not on a hospital campus. It is, in part, in the private home-based offices of hundreds of Virtual Radiologic (vRad) physicians, who provide "tele radiology" services to hospitals across the United States.
"Traditionally, most hospitals have used a centralized model, with doctors working onsite or out of a nearby office," says Patrick Williamson, security engineer, vRad. "Instead we offer hospitals the ability to work with our radiologists over the Internet. The hospital sends us the images for a patient's study, and the vRad physician reviews them and sends the findings back."
For vRad's hospital customers, this innovative use of telemedicine services augments the onsite services of local radiologists with the services of specialty- trained radiologists available to provide interpretations at any hour. For patients, the vRad model speeds turnaround times for study results and provides access to a larger network of subspecialists (for example, specialists in musculoskeletal radiology or neuroradiology) than they might have access to locally. As a web-based service, however, the vRad model also presents unique challenges. The most significant challenge is helping ensure the security of communications between radiologists and hospitals. vRad must contend with stringent regulatory requirements, including regulations issued to enforce the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), which mandate strict information security and auditing requirements.
Business Case Study #02:
New Charter Housing Trust uses Cisco Next-Generation Firewall to deliver secure Internet access to staff and residents. New Charter Housing Trust Group (New Charter) is a social housing authority, located in the Manchester region of the United Kingdom. The organization has approximately 20,000 housing units serving area citizens. New Charter works to provide accommodations that are affordable to people on low incomes, and limits to rent increases set by law mean that rents are kept at reasonable rates. Residents also include at-risk individuals or families who previously were homeless or in abusive relationships and need a fresh start.
The IT department provides services for the New Charter corporate staff of approximately 1000, as well as IT services onsite at the housing units. Providing both corporate and public networks is a big job in its own right, but the company is also actively increasing its housing stock and must integrate newly acquired sites and services into the network on an ongoing basis.
"We have to integrate these units into New Charter's existing IT network. On the face of it, you'd think that wouldn't be too difficult," says Darren Fishwick, telecommunications and network manager for New Charter. "But sometimes we run into massive incompatibilities with some of the legacy hardware and software."
In addition, Fishwick and the IT team at New Charter need to help ensure that the networks at existing and new locations are secure and that web-based filtering is in place.
"When we first implemented the resident PCs, we didn't put any filtering on, because we were of a mind that we didn't want to filter or restrict what people could access. But unfortunately, people are people, and we had a certain minority that was accessing things they shouldn't," Fishwick says.
Finally, New Charter needed to develop role-based access for its corporate network. "We had a supplier come in to do a bit of work for us, and it took us several hours to realize that all he'd done was disconnect the PC at the desk he was working at and connect his own laptop. This, of course, goes totally against our policy and highlighted that we need to ensure that people can't just come along and connect to our network," says Fishwick.
Requirements
Prepare a technical plan for your chosen case study:
The objective of this assignment is to prepare a planning document which will address requirement of the given case study.
1. Including diagrams (should be drawn using network drawing software), a clear and detailed description of the current architectural design of the network for chosen case study.
2. Write down all the security and business objectives required based on give case study.
3. Write down all the assumptions you made during the design of the network and network security.
4. Description and diagram should include current VPN or security status of the network.
5. Justify your design to satisfy all of the objectives such as security objectives, functional objectives and so on stated by the case study.
6. Describe the major and required equipment to implement the proposed VPN architecture and their significance e.g. routers, switches, cables, firewalls and any other equipment involved
7. What sorts of VPN tunnelling and encapsulation protocol(s) and technologies have been chosen on proposed design e.g. MPLS, IPSec, GRE with supportive arguments for their selection.
Submission Guidelines:
Your report should include the following:
- A title page, identifying student (name and number), name of the lecturer and assignment.
- The assignment must use 12 point font size minimum and at least single line spacing with appropriate section headings.
- Reference sources must be cited in the text of the report, and listed appropriately at the end in a reference list using IEEE reference style.
- Must be submitted as one MS Word file on Moodle.
Please make sure the drawn diagrams are neat and clear to assist with the description and the explanation of the assignment requirements.