Information assurance for enterprise fiber optic networks

A recent practical experience and emerging concepts in the protection of enterprise optical networks, such as those used by Fortune 500 companies worldwide is reviewed. Critical elements of data integrity are reviewed, including the cryptographic coprocessor features on mainframe enterprise-class servers, security issues on Fibre Channel networks with cascaded switching, and the hardening of untrusted storage area networks. Emerging protocols such as Encapsulating Security Payload over Fibre Channel and InfiniBand-to-Fibre Channel bridges are also considered. Finally, we discuss wavelength division multiplexing as a protocol independent channel extension and enabler for high data integrity architectures such as Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex/spl reg/ over metropolitan area networks.