Your Organization's Data Center Is Located On One Of The Flo

Your Organizations Datacenter Is Located On One Of The Floors Of The

Your organization’s datacenter is located on one of the floors of the building that the organization rents. It has six departments named Dept A, Dept B, Dept C, Dept D, Dept E, and Dept F, which are situated on five different floors, and all subnets have access to the Internet. The directors of Dept A and Dept F report to the same executive vice president, who is located on the same floor as Dept A. Additionally, Dept C and Dept F report to the senior vice president, who is situated on the same floor as Dept D.

The organization manages 15 servers hosting various types of data, including personal, organizational, departmental, and management data. Security and privacy are paramount; employees can only view their own personal data, departmental, and organization-wide data. However, management data access is restricted exclusively to directors, senior vice presidents, and executive vice presidents of each department.

Each department maintains two dedicated servers: one for personal, departmental, and organizational data, and another for management data. The project steering committee has decided to implement VLANs to enhance data security and traffic segmentation. The VLAN design must isolate specific management data flows between departments, particularly focusing on Dept F’s management data to Dept A's floor and Dept C’s management data to Dept D's floor, ensuring these flows are isolated from other data.

Based on these requirements, the task involves designing an effective VLAN scheme using a network drawing tool such as Microsoft Visio. The VLAN configuration should address:

- Segmentation of departmental data to prevent unauthorized access.

- Isolation of sensitive management data flows between specific departments and floors.

- Maintaining network efficiency and security.

- Visualizing the VLAN layout for easy reference and implementation.

In your report, you will discuss the rationale behind your final VLAN design, the challenges faced during the design process, how those challenges were resolved, and an analysis of the effectiveness of your VLAN configuration. You are also required to include a graphical diagram of your VLAN plan in the Word document.

Paper For Above instruction

The development of an effective VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) design for an organization with a complex departmental and management structure requires a thorough understanding of network segmentation, security policies, organizational hierarchy, and technical constraints. This paper discusses the approach taken in designing a VLAN scheme for an organization with multiple departments, floors, and sensitive management data flows, along with the challenges faced and solutions applied.

Design Approach and Rationale

The primary goal in designing the VLAN architecture was to isolate sensitive management data flows between specific departments and floors, especially focusing onDept F’s management data flowing to the floor of the executive vice president (EVP) andDept C’s management data relating toDept D’s floor where the senior vice president (SVP) resides. The core principle was to ensure that management data remains compartmentalized, thereby reducing the risk of unauthorized access or data breaches.

The initial step involved mapping the physical layout of the organization, identifying departmental locations, and understanding reporting hierarchies. Since the departments are distributed over five floors, and certain departments report to high-level executives on specific floors, the VLAN design needed to reflect both physical separation and logical segmentation.

Based on best practices, I configured separate VLANs for each department to isolate their primary operational traffic and further subdivided VLANs to distinguish management data flows. Specifically, I created separate VLANs for:

- Departmental data: Each department (A-F) has a dedicated VLAN to segregate its employee and operational data.

- Management data: Specialized VLANs for critical management data flows, particularly forDept F’s management data toDept A andDept C’s management data toDept D, to ensure their isolation from other data traffic.

Challenges and Resolutions

One of the primary challenges was ensuring that management data flows between departments on different floors were securely isolated without disrupting normal operations. To address this, I employed VLAN trunking with tag-based identification to selectively route management data flows. This involved configuring VLAN tagging on switches and setting up access control lists (ACLs) to restrict data flow exclusively to designated VLANs.

Another challenge encountered was maintaining network flexibility and scalability. To resolve this, I designed the VLANs hierarchically, grouping related departments logically and ensuring that adding new departments or data flows in the future would require minimal reconfiguration.

Inter-departmental communication also posed difficulties, especially given the need to isolate management data flows from regular data. This was managed by strategically assigning VLAN IDs and carefully configuring switch ports in accordance with best practices, such as using router-on-a-stick configurations for inter-VLAN routing only when necessary and tightly controlling access.

Final VLAN Design and Analysis

The final VLAN scheme comprises:

- Floor-based VLANs: Each floor has VLANs that encompass all departments located on the same floor.

- Department VLANs: Each department is assigned its own VLAN, with separate VLANs for management data.

- Isolated management data flows: Special VLANs are dedicated forDept F’s management data toDept A andDept C’s management data toDept D, isolated from other traffic via tagging, ACLs, and routing policies.

This design ensures that high-sensitivity management data flows are protected from other departmental traffic, thereby enhancing security. It also maintains the organizational hierarchy and supports efficient traffic management without creating excessive complexity.

The use of VLAN tagging and ACLs ensures that management data crossing floors is scrutinized and restricted, consistent with privacy and security requirements. The hierarchical VLAN structure allows easy scalability, such as adding new departments or reconfiguring existing data flows without disrupting the entire network.

Conclusion

Implementing this VLAN design aligns with organizational security policies, departmental structures, and data privacy requirements. It effectively segments data flows according to function and sensitivity, reducing the risk of data leaks or unauthorized access. The approach balances network flexibility with security, ensuring a scalable and manageable VLAN topology.

Diagram: A detailed diagram created with Microsoft Visio illustrates the VLAN segmentation, showing departmental VLANs, management VLANs, and inter-VLAN routing with ACLs for specific management data flows betweenDept F andDept A, andDept C andDept D.

References

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