Down with DHCP!!!!

[gigabit () satx rr com]

ok, some background...

i have transfered from network engineering to the information security 
group for my company, which is mid-sized with about 2000 employees 
across 90 locations (financial).

the lessons learned from being in network engineering is that they are 
first and foremost concerned with maintaining the production 
environment.  the management processes/procedures are completely 
disregarded if it is deemed necessary to "get something done".

as i try to build out a security plan for how to deal with 
servers/routers/end users, i keep coming to the conclusion that it will 
be meaningless unless control can be taken over what the other 
department is doing (network engineering).  the one commonality for all 
devices on the network is that they have an IP address.

i would like to propose to management that dhcp should be disabled, so 
as to force the building of a database that will hold all of the 
information needed to begin a comprehensive security policy.  the 
security group would manage the database to ensure that we are 
collecting information (such as O/S, IOS version, anti-virus 
compliance...)

i realize this will incur more work for those poor souls that have to 
deploy hardware, but i believe the benefits out-weigh the costs.  the 
benefits i see:

1.  once a branch location is staticly addressed, we have a working 
inventory of what is out there.

2.  a more secure environment.  no longer can users bring in non-
company owned devices and place them on our production network (which 
is already a policy---that isn't policed).

3.  i can setup automated scripts that check MAC addresses to IP 
addresses on the router ARP tables to check for spoofing.

our branch locations don't change very often.....some are still on 
token ring for god's sake, so i don't really see that much more 
workload.

Has anyone else dropped DHCP as a management/compliance decision?

thanks.

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