IBM Tivoli and Cisco Network Card User Manual


 
78 Building a Network Access Control Solution with IBM Tivoli and Cisco Systems
4.1 Company profile
Armando Brothers Banking Corporation (ABBC) is a fictional financial institution
that traces its roots back to the early days of industrialization. During a time of
radical change and growing financing needs, the Armando brothers founded a
bank situated in the pioneer town of Waterloo — now known as Austin, Texas. In
the early years, ABBC helped many entrepreneurial pioneers finance their
business ventures. In part due to their history of progressive management, as
well as their diligent awareness of emerging technologies, ABBC developed an
ability to rapidly expand and open branches throughout the state, the nation, and
ultimately the world. As the 20th century drew to a close, ABBC was an early
adopter of electronic banking technologies; they were among the first banks
offering their customers online account access. Today ABBC is one of the
dominant players in the highly competitive realm of worldwide finance.
ABBC is keenly aware that providing increased electronic access for its
customers requires ever-increasing security measures to protect its electronic
assets. Currently ABBC is leveraging the existing IBM product solutions of the
IBM Tivoli Identity Manager and the IBM Tivoli Access Manager to manage and
enforce its authentication and authorization policies. Like many companies,
ABBC has found that traditional hacker attempts to gain unauthorized access are
only part of the security threat factor. In today’s environment network, worms,
trojans, and viruses pose an equally tangible threat. ABBC is aware that more
than 90% of security attacks exploit known security flaws for which a patch is
available or a preventive measure is known. ABBC is further challenged by
compliance legislation such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) and the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), as are many companies. To assist with both threat
mitigation and management of business policy compliance issues, ABBC has
adopted the IBM Security Compliance Manager product.
The inclusion of the IBM Security Compliance Manager product enables ABBC
to reap a quick return on investment by automating and centralizing security
compliance monitoring. Previously ABBC limited the use of the IBM Security
Compliance Manager product to their servers. In the current project, ABBC will
extend the use of the IBM Security Compliance Manger product to its
workstations. Following workstation client deployment, they will embark on the
next logical step: integrating their existing IBM Security Compliance Manager
infrastructure with the Cisco-sponsored Network Admission Control program.
ABBC decided also to enhance the scope of the project by employing Tivoli
Configuration Manager software currently used by the operations department to
provide the users with help in keeping their workstation compliant with the
corporate security policy.