IT Baseline Protection Manual - The Information Warfare Site

Safeguard Catalogue - Organisation Remarks
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For medium-sized systems, in particular, it makes sense to divide the
system into management domains in accordance with the actual
network topology (especially if there are no differences in areas of
responsibility, for example).
Organisational responsibilities within the company or agency
The organisational structure can be emulated by the management
system, giving rise to domains such as "Accounting",
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"Programming", "Production Division" or "Software Development
Division", for example.
Security-related factors which have an effect on management policy
can also result in the creation of multiple management regions. This
is the case in particular when management tasks for certain
organisational units need to be delegated, without the local
administrator being given access rights to the management functions
for the components outside his or her sphere of responsibility.
Existing infrastructure
Examples of factors to be examined include the geographical
distribution of branches or the spatial distribution of work teams
across the storeys of a building.
- Safety considerations
- Multiple management regions may be necessary if the
management product supports different encryption
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mechanisms for each region but normally only one
mechanism can actually be used per region. If different
mechanisms are indeed used between individual management
components, multiple management regions are necessary.
Example: The system being administered comprises several
database servers with sensitive data and the associated clients,
which do not store data themselves. The management console
should always communicate with the servers using strong
encryption, because the databases are also administered via
the management system. Communication with the clients, on
the other hand, should be only weakly encrypted, for
performance reasons. In this case it is normally necessary to
create two management regions: one region containing the
servers and a second region containing the clients.
Multiple management regions increase reliability, because for
example in the event of the failure of one management region
the other regions can continue to be administered
independently of the failed region.
- The number of computers to be administered per management
region also has an influence. Most products give
recommendations as to the number of computers that can be
administered by the management server of one region. A
figure of 200 computers per server is not unusual, however.
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IT-Baseline Protection Manual: Oktober 2000