Convergence: Yea or Nay?

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Convergence: Yea or Nay?

7/1/2008

By Matt Villano

As part of this project, Bryant has extended its IP-based emergency response system to provide enhanced physical security for eight communities in Rhode Island, two communities in Massachusetts, and a regional dispatch center in Connecticut. Additionally, the university has replaced deskbound employees' "hard radios" with multi-channel, push-to-talk services on a PC or laptop-- an efficiency move that Gloster estimates has saved nearly $22,000.

"We're finding that a converged network is more effective and cheaper to operate than the old approach ever was," he says, explaining that campus administrators have come to view endangered, exposed, or compromised property of any kind as something to get to fast. "At the end of the day, an asset is an asset, whether it's informational or physical, and it's up to us to devise a way to access those assets quickly and easily."

At California's Golden West College, the two-year institution has blended data and physical security by distributing faculty laptops equipped with software-based measures that not only ensure the data stay safe, but that the equipment itself is useless to nonapproved "appropriators." The result: more secure equipment, and enhanced security across the entire network.

LOCKING DOWN LAPTOPS

While Bryant's approach to logical and physical security is broad-based, converged security at the two-year Golden West College has developed on a smaller scale. There, technologists have blended the two security approaches by distributing faculty laptops equipped with a variety of software-based measures, to ensure not only that the data on the computers stay safe, but that the computers are physically useless to non-approved "appropriators." The result has not only been more secure equipment, but enhanced security across every corner of the network.

The laptops-- 175 of them in all-- were provided to staff members last summer. Eighty-two of the computers came with hard-disk encryption from GuardianEdge Technologies and the Computrace Complete theft recovery, data protection, and secure asset tracking service from Absolute Software.

Anthony Maciel, the school's director of technology support services, claims this duo of software programs is a cost-effective way of tackling both logical and physical security simultaneously. "You never know when a faculty member is carrying around student information on his or her computer," says Maciel. "That's why we consider this approach as converged security-- because we're physically securing the laptop, but we're making sure whatever data exist on that laptop are safe as well."

For starters, the GuardianEdge product secures the data. Incorporating 256-bit encryption, the software requires users to type in a password to access any of the data on a laptop's hard drive. Maciel has set up the system so that users can take their laptops off the network, but when they come back on, the software automatically checks with a server to make sure its encryption is still up-to-date. If a user strays from the network for more than 90 days, he or she must visit the IT department to receive updates manually.