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Security, Interoperability, Challenge: University of Miami’sMessaging Future
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Problem On November 9, 2001, http://www.computerworld.com published a case study regarding the University of Miami’s messaging future. The current e-mail messaging system for the University of Miami at that time included a UNIX-based e-mail system utilized by the students, and a completely separate Microsoft Exchange e-mail server utilized by the faculty and staff. The University of Miami is requesting a unified e-mail system for all students, faculty, and staff possibly by implementing lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP). Other issues that need to be addressed when implementing the new messaging system are keeping bandwidth priorities intact for business and educational purposes, interoperability such that the new messaging system consistently talks with the other messaging systems, and as the new system is implemented, security must keep hackers out, but must not invade the privacy of students, faculty and staff all while reducing the cost of licensing fees which are currently seen with Microsoft Exchange. Purpose The executive summary to follow will dictate a tactical plan to implementing a new e-mail messaging system at the University of Miami. This tactical plan is an intermediate-range plan, which will depict a less than one-year approximate time-line of the systems implementation and measurement performance. Included in this executive summary is the tactical plan that will provide progress reports towards long-term goals at the University of Miami. A solution to the problem will be created, which ultimately includes how this solution will be implemented, how the new system will be tested, how security will be maintained, how bandwidth will be maintained, how interoperability will be accomplished, and how the new system will floor current high licensing fees. A whole new system will be implemented, which in the future will allow for a web-based system as well. The University of Miami has chosen to utilize a LDAP for the new e-mail messaging system. Introduction to LDAP at the University of Miami As stated in the problem section, the current e-mail system includes a UNIX-based system for the students, and a Microsoft Exchange system for the faculty and staff. The University of Miami has chosen to implement LDAP to centralize their new e-mail messaging system. LDAP provides the University of Miami with open solutions, a secure and extensible format, it is programmable from a set of standard, it provides gateway services, and provides vendor support (Wilcox). LDAP is a client-server system where a client connects to the actual LDAP server and has options to query the server for information or updates information into a directory on the server. The server then will answer the query, refer to another LDAP server, or accept the updated information into the directory given specific permission capabilities. The LDAP directory for the University of Miami will consist of information of students, faculty, and staff. The LDAP will consolidate student, faculty, and staff information for all of the universities network applications. This will provide the University of Miami with security through facilitated security methods, which will be decribed in detail below. The implementation of LDAP will also allow all applications and services to communicate and work with one another, creating interoperability through a stable system with the server as the backbone.
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