MathWorks develops and supplies technical computing software and has more than 1,000 employees. It was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Natick, Massachusetts. It has offices and representatives throughout the world. The company has been profitable every year since its inception and is privately held.
To realize maximum security with minimal cost
To establish a security plan that meets the company's operational style, and not force the style to change to meet the plan.
To utilize, as much as possible, interlinking and existing software.
To provide simple access in a number of languages to enhance world usability. (1)
There are a number of basic business issues that must be addressed by the security team tasked with the responsibility of designing, specifying, and implementing or overseeing the implementation of a complete IT security plan for MathWorks.
The first and most important objective decision will concern the policies of how Mathworks desires to implement the system. The two key questions that the Mathworks team must ask are:
Will the plan be in place explicitly to deny all services except those critical to the mission of connecting to the Net?
Is the plan in place to provide a metered and audited method of ``queuing'' access in a non-threatening manner? (2)
Another business consideration is the determination of the level of monitoring, redundancy, and control desired? Having established the acceptable risk level (e.g., how paranoid are Mathworks senior management, middle management, regional and international managers and the IT staff) by first resolving the issue, Mathworks can form a checklist of what should be monitored, permitted, and denied. In other words, figure out our overall objectives, and then combine a needs analysis with a risk assessment, and sort the almost always conflicting requirements into a laundry list that specifies what the company plans to implement. (3)
Of...