Quelle: CIO Asia

At the turn of this century, Chartered SemiconductorManufacturing--already one of the world's top three semiconductorfoundries businesses, providing wafer fabrication services andtechnologies to semiconductor suppliers and systems companies--wantedto develop a highly scalable and extendable integrated IT system thatwas both open to any organisation along its supply chain and providedfor maximum security.

The main reason for Chartered's demand for greater 'openness' is thecompany's approach to running its business, which necessitatescollaboration with its many partners, often on a global scale. Takingthis approach means that the company's operating IT environment has tooffer as much access to as many parties as needed. This is an eventaller order if you consider the size of its operations today.Established in 1987, Chartered now operates five wafer fabricationfacilities, and expects to complete outfitting a sixth facility tohandle 300 mm wafer fabrication. And to ensure smooth operations inall these facilities as well as in its business offices, the companyuses: a corporate network extended across 400 servers housed in itsdata centres in Singapore and the U.S., and wired by varioustechnologies and standards ranging from 100 Ethernet (for local areanetworks) and G-bit Ethernet (for direct server connections); a globalwide area network; and direct connections from fab environments tojoint-venture partners and selected suppliers to facilitate remoteoperations and maintenance of fab equipment. Add to that mix, theconnections between the company and its various customers via theInternet, including traffic across a virtual private network (VPN),and you have possibly one of the largest and also most open networksin the industry.

So imagine how big a challengeit is to, one, maintain and ensure that this network remains open toaccommodate and drive business growth, and, two, make it secure at thesame time. Bret Watson, Head of IT Assurance and SecuritySecurity IT atChartered, does not need to imagine. He lived it, beginning in 2000."Security is critical. At the same time, the network has to remainopen to the extent that the efficiency of the entire supply chain canbe realised," says Watson, who adopted what he calls the"defence-in-depth" model of security. Alles zu Security auf CIO.de

Multi-layer Defence