5TH International Congress on Technology - Engineering & Science - Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia (2018-02-01)

Application Of Network Security Approaches To University Management

This paper suggests network solutions in university management. Practice approach to building scalable infrastructure security architectures is presented. Digital transformation requires leadership that can maintain and balance competing interests from faculty, administrators, students and others. Network security operations (processes, workload, complexity, etc.) are complicated and they need to be integrated into the agenda of university management and the support of whole academic and administrative staff and students. Network monitoring system is used to improve network effectiveness. Security policy, procedures and guidelines are adopted to guarantee seamless operating of networks and systems. The IT security and data protection policy of Varna Free University (VFU) determines a system of measures, rules and risk analysis of the IT applications and data aimed at: guaranteeing the confidentiality of the information through the application of approved restrictions over the access and revealing of information; providing comprehensiveness of the information through protection against illegal modifications or destruction of information; providing information accessibility through ensuring reliable and timely access to information; achieving accountability of the information through the introduction of control on the access and rights over the information resources. The IT security and data protection policy refers to all the documents (both in an electronic format and on paper); data base; computers, including portable ones; software assets; local network; the websites of the University; repositories; data copying and transmission devices; University’s infrastructure (electricity supply, local network cables, etc.); personnel (employees, lecturers) and students. The objectives of the present policy are: ensuring continuity of the business processes; minimizing the information security risks leading to losses or damages for VFU its partners or other stakeholders; providing the necessary resources for maintaining an efficient Information Security Management System; (informing the employees about their responsibilities and obligations concerning information security; assuring compliance with the regulatory and contractual requirements. In order to guarantee the technical communication within the University, to keep the costs at a low level and minimize the risks for the IT security in communication related areas, only such hardware and software should be used, which would ensure unproblematic communication that can be proven. Those systems should have the same standard in respect to virus protection and the level of compatibility with the operating systems established at VFU. The team of Varna Free University designed a flexible proper solution aiming at lower operating costs and better performance is application of cloud technologies. The IT infrastructure of VFU consists of 46 virtual servers and only 3 physical servers. Network monitoring system is used to make the transition easier, and to improve network effectiveness. Security policy, procedures and guidelines are adopted to guarantee seamless operating of networks and systems. After testing a variety of offerings, we settled on a product that could provide unified IT monitoring and management. Moving from “server monitoring” to “service monitoring,” don’t necessarily care what the server is doing at the high level – just what it’s doing for our students, administrative and academic staff. The monitoring system can provide visibility into both cloud and physical resources, to make the transition easier. It is giving alerts of modules that are working intermittently or sporadically or backend equipment that may not have been cleanly set up, which hampered application performance. With the help of the system the IT staff cleaned up many performance issues, and quickly identified points of poor performance. Cloud scalable servers are used to meet the growing needs for online services.
Prof. Anna Nedyalkova, Prof. Teodora Bakardjieva, Assoc. Prof. Krasimir Nedyalkov