Session Abstract

Cost-effective network security has traditionally lagged overall network capacity by approximately an order of magnitude at the University of Michigan. With UM's current network border running multiple 100G links, this unfortunate calculus remains intact with the usual firewall/IPS network security vendor solutions. As a result, UM has partnered with a half-dozen vendors to architect a new type of network border security solution that leverages FPGA-based appliances programmed with a variety of threat intelligence data. Specifically, high confidence threat intelligence based mitigation has been very successful at the University of Michigan in a number of areas within our campus boundaries. As such, expanding the scope of this to mitigate known threats across the entirety of our network edge is a natural progression and adds an extremely valuable outer-most layer of network defense for our campus community.