A year ago, it was a battle just to deploy firewalls. "Now we're deploying one every couple of weeks," Reese says. Security technology is considered a priority, even with the university's budget constraints. "In a period of tight budgets, there's even more interest in security. No one wants to get a bad internal audit," Reese says.
Phil Reese -- Director of network services, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.
Phil Reese, 51, runs Stanford University's Gigabit Ethernet backbone and 802.11b wireless LAN. His duties include overseeing the equipment and support for both networks, and expanding the security architecture for the wireless LAN. He also handles new initiatives, such as studying voice-over-IP for the university. Reese has been with Stanford for one year and in the IT field for 14 years. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a master's from Stony Brook University and a Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley.
Next Time, I'll: Scour more for vendor offerings in this area. We could find only four vendors, but once I had made my decision, 10 different vendors called. I'd also involve the users and university more in the rollout. Even though we let LAN administrators know about the deployment and put up signs in the areas that would be affected, the day of the introduction, people were saying, "You didn't tell us this was coming."
Biggest Security Hole: Conventions and large meetings that come to campus. The attendees want to get wireless, but they may or may not have their NICs registered. That hasn't been a problem securitywise so far, but it's only a matter of time.
