Thoughts and Theories From Roger Andre
for the curious, and people getting to grips with computing and computers.
Monday 11 August 2008, 8:45 PM
Time For Goverments To Come Off Line
came up with a way for disconnecting themselves from the world wide web. At least the portions that hold details relating to national
security, and the ones that hold all our personal details.
This does'nt mean that governments should disconnect themselves from the world at large, or us humble citizens. Isn't there a way that
parallel networks could be set up (no VPNs allowed).
Our rulling agencies could run seperate terminals for day to day web access and use the most secure web based e-mail clients, but for goodness sakes, please keep all your (and our) sensitive data well away from any potential break ins. At the moment it's as though gold bars are being kept behind thin and foggy glass.
Please do this for us, we pay you enough!
Oh...I nearly forgot not to mention the cyber warfare that I've been reading about elswhere on this site!
PreviousComments on this post
Actually the military here in the US does operate a separate network system from the Internet. The way they insure secrecy is they own all the hardware and they protect it with guns and manpower. But terrorist access isn't what screws up most normal people's lives.
Its the idiots that are carrying around our credit card, social security and personal details on their laptops that piss me off. That seems to be happening every freaking day. If it was a crime as opposed to a non-criminal offense to lose a laptop with other people's information on it, and sent some people to jail for it, then the cretins that carry unencrypted personal data around on laptops would think twice about taking a little work home that should NOT go out the office door.
The network interface to the Internet issue is real but the decisions being made to spend the appropriate amount of funding on securing the network connections are being made by un-informed (at best) bureaucrats without a clue. Setting standards is fine but the decision making idiots don't bother to keep the system updated or don't sequester the private data properly or don't enforce internal control on the data. Its not a piece of hardware or software, its a continual process that secures a network.
Its been proven again and again, its the people that keep the networks secure or not. Since management doesn't give a damn to keep the info under tight control, the employees don't bother either.
(Sorry about that! This is a hot button topic for me. I've worked for some really network-stupid people in the past.)
Thank you for that...i didn t know about the US military...makes sense.
As for laptops being left lying around, I understand your fury, but whats it going to be like when super functional phones can carry 60-120 gb and smart alecs decide to take their work home on those?
Taking this kind of work home should be gross misconduct, and managers should be held accountable.
