AS IT INFRASTRUCTURE has risen to new prominence in the age of the

Internet, so too has the role of the Chief Technology Officer at

network consulting companies. In his role as CTO of Callisma, George

Orlov helps define strategy for customers who are grappling with issues

of bandwidth, security, directories, and convergence. In an interview

with InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard, Orlov discusses these

four networking trends and the impact they will have on the

enterprise.

InfoWorld: What's the biggest trend in the networking segment of the

industry?

Orlov: Everyone is moving to optical. It's a disruptive technology

that allows you to provide pure, raw data bit-rates for 1/100th the

price of your current T1, T3, DS3, or OC3 line. If you invest in this

new technology, you are able to substantially undercut the competition.

If you're an existing customer or existing service provider [and] you

don't enable your network to provide these vastly larger data transport

rates at a vastly lower cost, you will get decimated.

InfoWorld: How will this affect customers, as opposed to service

providers, at the enterprise level?

Orlov: Most enterprises don't have private networks, although it's

getting to the point where if they're in a campus environment it's

cheaper to lay their own fiber than to continue to buy point-to-points

from the existing service providers.

InfoWorld: How well are most people dealing with security and

networking issues?

Orlov: No one's shop is as secure as they want it to be, nor is

security as far up on their radar screen as it needs to be. It's like

earthquake insurance or earthquake preparedness. You never really think

about [being insured or prepared] until the earthquake happens, and

then everyone is scrambling around saying, 'Why didn't we prepare?'

InfoWorld: Do most customers adopt a hide-in-plain-sight security

strategy and then hope for the best?

Orlov: No one overtly says, 'We're going to hide in plain sight.'

But security is much more complex than buying a firewall and plugging

it in. Many people say, 'I've got a firewall, now I'm safe.' Well, 75

percent or so of breaches come from insiders, and a firewall doesn't

help you [in those instances] at all. It's layers of policy, process,

and other things -- long before you buy the hardware or the

intrusion-detection systems or the managed services -- that are

important.

InfoWorld: Is the real threat the enemy within?

Orlov: There are people who get upset for whatever reason and take

advantage of data resources, and they do an immense amount of damage.

Most of that damage is done inside, and much of it is malicious in

nature.

InfoWorld: Why is security so complex?

Orlov: With complex rule sets, you need to understand in detail the

applications and the network layer. It's incredibly complex because

there's not just an IP port. It's about which ports, which applications

use which ports, and which other ports [are] across your different

security zones within your organization. You want to keep those

segmented,

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