The University of Adelaide is now planning to use StealthWatch to monitor its network usage. StealthWatch is made by Lancope, and is a departure from the Cisco based tools the university used to use. The investment is costing the university $100,000 AUS for the switch.
The new system is intended to monitor how a network is used to seek out flaws, weaknesses and make using the network more efficient. The university was expecting see more efficiency in its staff right away, but found instead they are using the network slightly more as the new system highlights inefficiencies and flaws that need to be fixed.
The new monitoring system is part of a major IT overhaul being done by the University of Adelaide, which is expected to run as high as $4 million AUS. The monitoring system is meant to help increase the value of the overall investment by eliminating unnecessary downtime and increasing speed, among other things.
The university has said that the new system has serve them well already through its learning curve. While some software requires classes, manuals and training resources to learn, StealthWatch had a short learning curve or less than a month, and allowed for users to teach themselves how to use it with ease. That’s a feature that is amazingly useful for any software in this busy technological age.
The system is connected to all aspects of the university network, including the firewall. As vulnerabilities are found, they can be blocked and fixed. It can also determine which server originated the attack, and other useful tools, such as tracking network switchover and over all use. “You can use this tool to watch clients connecting to the old system drop off over time and clients coming to the new system increasing over time,” university representative Whitbread said.
