HARRY AND MAE NETWORK 1

Harry and Mae’s network can be improved through a number of ways. The first two possibilities involve the use of hardware components for the vulnerability fixing. The likely options are the use of a switched port analyzer (SPAN) port or a network test access port (TAP). The design considerations involved in both cases seek to find which of the two is better in the situation. While Network TAP involves the additional costs of hardware (Bejtlich, n.d.), it proves a more versatile choice. The chief reasons for this is because it eradicates the chances of packets being dropped and, therefore, the monitoring machine obtains all packets, including physical errors. (Mansfield & Antonakos, 2010). The Network TAP is connected between the router and the firewalls. A monitoring computer is connected to the Network TAP to check the network between the two points.

Another improvement would be the use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN). The VPN is used to tunnel the data to be sent, ensuring it can be kept safe from prying eyes. To ensure the safety of data, it is encrypted by the sender and decrypted by the receiver. It is relayed through a tunnel that makes sure it cannot be intercepted. In this configuration, the VPN server is placed behind the firewall. In this case, the network engineer need not worry about the fact that all tunneled data will pass through the network as an authorization protocol ensures only those with valid credentials can tunnel data through .

References

Bejtlich, R. The practice of network security monitoring.

Mansfield, K., & Antonakos, J. (2010). Computer networking from LANs to WANs. Boston, MA: Course Technology, Cengage Learning.