Business requirements inform enterprise-wide network refresh

Brief

The ANU required a discovery across their diverse stakeholder base to gather business requirements for their upcoming network refresh.​

Functional and non-functional requirements were needed to inform the scoping and implementation of a comprehensive network refresh which complied with zero trust principles.​

Challenge

The ANU operates a multi-campus environment and delivers teaching, learning, and research services to a broad range of stakeholders.

Recent data breaches highlighted the need to ensure the security of the enterprise without compromising teaching and research operations or limiting the important external connections with external researchers and the community.​

Capturing detailed business requirements was the first step to achieving this critical balance.

Solution

• Comprehensive discovery across all campuses and departments of the university

• Develop core personas to highlight diverse network needs

• Gather functional and non-functional business requirements with full traceability back to source

• Develop use cases to provide context for niche network requirements

• Final report and recommendations including risk identification​

Outcomes

• ANU now have a comprehensive view of ‘who’ the network serves and ‘how’ they need to operate

• Discovery highlighted the need for high levels of segmentation across the network to protect commercial research

• Discovery also highlighted the number of legacy systems (many now out of support) which require secure and uninterrupted access to the network to sustain long-term research projects

• The network design is now user-centric and evidence based