■ Interview with our customers: Sendai City Industrial Promotion Organization
Product installed by Sendai City Industrial Promotion Organization
NetSkateKoban
| ■ The security demonstration experiment carried out by Sendai City Industrial Promotion Organization |
-- We heard that the Sendai City Industrial Promotion Organization (referred to hereon as SCIPO) carried out a demonstration experiment using NetSkate Koban. What sort of experiment was this?
The Ministry for Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology is currently carrying out development of intelligent clusters. This experiment was carried out with the aim of establishing the practical usage of the ongoing project results, the sensor based security management system, in an actual network.
Put simply, we wanted to establish that sensor based security management systems like NetSkate Koban were really functional in real networks, rather than just empty theories on paper, therefore we experimented with our actual network.
-- What are the details of the experiment?
At several places inside the SCIPO network we deployed NetSkate Koban sensors to monitor the network 24/7 and generated reports from the data collected. The parameters monitored are as follows:
- Connection status of terminals (whether fraudulent terminals are connected or not)
- Traffic type
- Traffic volume
- Traffic properties
- Presence/Absence of fraudulent access
- Device name
| ■ Reaffirming that assumptions are taboo in security |
-- How did you feel on completing the experiment?
We have to admit, we were a little startled.
-- When you say you were startled…?
In the initial stages, to be honest, we were not particularly expecting to find anything new in this experiment.
We had setup the sensor based security system in the actual environment. At SCIPO we use our network only in the strictly normal way, and therefore we were expecting the data collected to be average or thereabouts as well.
-- What did you felt looking at the results of your experiment?
It's a strange example, but it was like having gone through a full physical check up with complete confidence about your health, but getting an 'further diagnosis required' as your diagnosis outcome.
With regard to our network security, in addition to all our technological counter measures, we had also laid down internal regulations and administered staff training, and so were expecting nothing but a positive result ? but several unexpected results came out.
For example, even the network traffic, if tracked by time, the results we obtained were different from what we were expecting. Evidently one can never make decisions based on assumptions. To feel 'I thought I knew', is dangerous.
We understood very well the need to observe rather than assume.
| ■ Plans to continue using NetSkate Koban even after the experiment |
 -- We heard that Sendai City Industrial Promotional Organization is planning to continue using NetSkate Koban
We are seriously considering it at present.
Frankly, we had originally planned to return both the equipment and software after the experiment was done. However after looking at the results, we understood the need for continuous monitoring of data on the network and continuous measures to protect our network. Monitoring of data flow needs to be continuous, or else it is meaningless.
Since we (SCIPO) are advisers to industrialists in Sendai, we need to correct our own infrastructure first. We would like to persist with our intranet monitoring, and deepen our understanding of security.
-- Thank you for your time
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