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NETSCOUT > Case Studies > Government IT Agency Balances Security with High Availability

Government IT Agency Balances Security with High Availability

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Network Security

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Cybersecurity

Services

System Integration

The Challenge

The government agency manages IT infrastructure for the country’s Ministry of finance. It is responsible for hosting online tax services, and processes tax returns for the country’s population. The agency runs two redundant data centers to ensure the highest availability of services. The organization maintains sensitive data on the entire population of the country and thus must provide the highest levels of security. At the same time, availability of services is critical as the network must be online around the clock for such a high-profile application, where every citizen can potentially be affected by a downtime. The agency must carefully balance security and privacy of citizens’ data with meeting the high standards the government has set in serving its taxpayers. The agency was in the process of deploying the McAfee IPS (intrusion prevention system) but was concerned about the potential for the security system to bring the entire network down, and with that, the reputation of the Ministry, let alone the disruption this may cause to the national economy.

About The Customer

The customer in this case study is a government agency that manages IT infrastructure for the country’s Ministry of finance. The agency is responsible for hosting online tax services, and processes tax returns for the country’s population. The agency runs two redundant data centers to ensure the highest availability of services. The organization maintains sensitive data on the entire population of the country and thus must provide the highest levels of security. At the same time, availability of services is critical as the network must be online around the clock for such a high-profile application, where every citizen can potentially be affected by a downtime.

The Solution

The agency explored multiple packet aggregation and management solutions and found that the NETSCOUT packet flow switches were the only systems that would help secure the network, without putting its functionality at risk. The key considerations for the agency were: No single point of failure, Policy-based triggers, Both positive and negative health checks, Automated management, Active inline aggregation and load balancing. The customer deployed two NETSCOUT 2200 series packet flow switches, one each in its two data centers. The IPS deployment went flawlessly, with the two redundant McAfee IPS systems now live on the agency’s network. The IT managers chose to deploy the NETSCOUT packet flow switches because no other vendor could guarantee that combined solution would not affect the network in the event of a system outage.

Operational Impact

The packet flow management deployment added network aggregation capabilities, session-based/flow-aware load balancing, inline tool bypass option with policy-based event triggering and custom health check functionality.
The NETSCOUT systems load balance the traffic in case of a period of heavy utilization, especially during tax time.
With NETSCOUT, the agency can not only check that the McAfee IPS appliance is passing traffic, but also be sure the software is functional and blocking malicious packets.