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Defence adds more protection

With an existing mixture of mainframe and proprietary Unix systems, the Department of Defence has chosen the x86 and IA64 architectures over Sparc for its new $450,000 security management application.

With a network accessed daily by more than 70,000 military personnel and contractors, Defence expects the automated event notification system to reduce manual operations.

As reported by Computerworld in May, Defence procured Tier-3's Behaviour Anomaly Detection (BAD) software, dubbed Huntsman, to provide a holistic and security solution across the department's network, operating systems and applications.

With a choice of Microsoft Windows Server on Intel or Solaris on Sparc for Huntsman, Defence opted for Wintel. SQL Server 64-bit edition has also been chosen over Oracle, the only other database supported by the application.

A Defence spokesperson said the selection criteria for a security information management product did not specify any particular hardware platform and required each vendor to make recommendations for suitable hardware based on the projected event load - events per second.

The infrastructure for the Tier-3 solution consists of Intel Itanium2-based HP Integrity rx7620 four-way servers and Xeon-based HP Proliant DL580 four-way and DL380 two-way servers.

Hewlett-Packard was chosen over other Intel server vendors to satisfy "existing Defence supplier and contractual arrangements," the Defence spokesperson said.

The spokesperson would not reveal hardware costs but did say the equipment purchased is part of the total project.

"Most vendors provided a solution comprising either Sparc-Oracle or Intel-SQL Server," the Defence spokesperson said. "Intel-SQL Server was also the recommended solution from Tier 3, based on the projected event rate."

This latest commitment to Intel comes in the wake of a Xeon-based Unisys ES7000 mainframe-class machine bought to run a new PeopleSoft and Oracle HR self-service system last year.

The BAD software works by using host-based agents to collect system event information from multiple data sources. The agents can also monitor and control processes, monitor system memory, and disk space utilization, according to the company.

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More about: Department of Defence, Hewlett-Packard, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Software Works, Tier 3, Unisys

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