Over the past 8 months or so I have had the privilege of working with a BICSI certified Registered Communications Distribution Designer (RCDD) as part of a project assignment.  Having learned about the importance of cable management in a previous life in the automotive industry, I was immediately taken by his thoughtful and dedicated approach to the art of cable management.  While your server and network cabinets may not look like this, the reality is that they probably don't look nearly as good as this layout or this installation as many of us don't spend enough time considering the importance of proper cable management as part of an overall project.

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I am a huge fan of virtualization and specifically VMWare. VMWare has a geek factor that is unrivaled by pretty well any other technology. It is also remarkably practical for consolidation efforts, gaining efficiencies in hardware use and flexibility of resourcing.

One area that is ripe for using virtualization is in securing systems. Now, virtualization by itself is not going to solve any of your security concerns. What it will do is allow you more flexibility with a limited budget. 

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Communications Manager formerly CallManager is the application foundation of the Unified Communications infrastructure.  This component provides traditional telephony features as well as the foundation for advanced features such as presence, mobility, preference, and rich media collaboration.

The comparable traditional telephony component would be the PBX (Private Branch Exchange) or key system.  These are the traditional telephone systems that have been around for decades and are now being replaced at a rapid rate with new yet mature and emerging  technology such as Cisco's Unfired Communications Manager.  It is a known fact that Cisco is now the leader in the telephony market space and is displacing the likes of Avaya and Nortel.

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I get a lot of customers who are looking for vulnerability assessments of specific systems or specific application. Rarely do people ask for assessments of their overall system architecture. Most assume that since they have a firewall they are covered. Unfortunately it isn't usually as easy as that.

 First of all, what makes a good security architecture? I believe that it needs to take into account, at least, these things:

• Appropriate use of security zones
• Segregation of components
• The technologies in use
• Monitoring requirements
• Available infrastructure components
• Use requirements
• Communication
• Ease of securing each zone
• Performance
• Availability
• Manageability

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