in reply to Re: US National Security
in thread US National Security

At one time I felt like you do, but I have learned that any system that is heavily bureaucratic, as the military is you have the same things happening. It's not that the people running the military are stupid. They happened to be very good at what they do. They were put in their positions because there are very good at making war and the thing directly related to that purpose. They were not put there because they are good managers or good network admin. The organization in its self is also partially to blame. Things tend to work in a chain for military, to the point of being a micromanaged hell. Say you have a list of thing to get done. This list has millions of things on it starting at get bin Laden and ending at CGI security. Chances are that until CGI security gets bumped up a few thousand places it will get pushed forward a few years.

Another thing you need to be aware of is that the military follows the highest from of network security. If you want your network to be secure do not make it externally available. If you wanted to get secrets from the military, or any branch of the government for that matter, you need to break into a facility and find a terminal that has a red sticker on it marked secret. Occasionally some idiot will put classified information on an unclassified workstation, but this does not happen very often and when it happens that person is punished accordingly. On the other had server security is entirely a different matter. You do not want a hacker owning a your server.

Sparky

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Re x3: US National Security
by stefp (Vicar) on Jan 05, 2002 at 23:51 UTC
    If you wanted to get secrets from the military, or any branch of the government for that matter, you need to break into a facility and find a terminal that has a red sticker on it marked secret.

    I like that. In a company that should stay unnamed, there was a sudden concern for security, or more probably a concern for displaying a concern for security to satisfy some (potential) customer. The result was to add proheminent stickers on folders containing sensitive information. No special care was made to lock these folders. So the neat result was that a potential spy would more easily spot the documents he wanted to steal or copy!!

    -- stefp -- check out TeXmacs wiki

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Re:x3 US National Security
by Sweeper (Pilgrim) on Jan 22, 2002 at 00:59 UTC
    Occasionally some idiot will put classified information on an unclassified workstation, but this does not happen very often and when it happens that person is punished accordingly.

    It happened at least once. Do you know Operation Chastise, the destruction of Ruhr water dams on 16/17 May 1942? This operation was the brainchild of Barnes Wallis, a British engineer. In March 1941, he had written a preliminary report, and had given a hundred copies to various people, including journalists. He even sent some copies to the still neutral United States where some German sympathiser could possibly read it.

    His reasoning is that a widely distributed document would be considered by spies as an uninteresting document.

    Source: The Dambusters Raid, John Sweetman, Arms and Armour, ISBN 1-85409-180-8 update corrected a few typos: "Rhur" -> "Ruhr", and "barrage" -> "dam" :-(

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