In a message dated: Tue, 08 May 2001 14:43:29 EDT
Benjamin Scott said:
>I was trying to make the point (unsuccessfully, obviously) that most
>government agencies have a suffocating mass of rules and regulations they have
>to follow. Everything has to be analyzed, certified, and approved till you
>are blue in the face. Heaven forbid you try to do something not already on
>the list. It is very nice to say Linux is free, but it may not be on the
>approved list of software an organization can use.
I suppose you are correct. I wasn't in govt service long enough to
become a mindless drone who only did what was on some approved list.
However, I witnessed more than my fair share of those who were this
way.
> Not to mention the fact that many government agencies have no IT support
>staff to speak of, let alone someone savvy enough to configure a Linux system
>(or any other system, for that matter) as a firewall. Implementation costs do
>not disappear simply because the software is free. (I realize you were not
>claiming they did.)
True, but sooner or later they're going to have to wake up and
realize that they need an IT staff, and that they need to pay them
well. You'd think they'd have realized this by now, since govt.
sites have been getting cracked since the early days of the ARPANet :)
> The real problem here is a disregard of the importance of information
>security, and a lack of adequate funding for Information Technology in
>general.
That's quite true, and the govt. isn't the only place that's guilty
of this disregard. I see it all too often in the private sector as
well. On a daily basis even :)
>Let's not paint Linux as a magic wand to fix that. :-)
No you're right, nor was I trying to say that Linux was going to fix
that. I was merely pointing out that you don't need a huge budget,
or the latest/greatest piece of hardware to build a decent
packet-filtering firewall which will help alleviate the effects of a
DoS attack.
Provided they've already got a sysadmin (something the article
implies), all they need now is the right OS, and maybe a little
training. Some individual initiative on the sysadmin's part wouldn't
hurt either :)
--
Seeya,
Paul
----
It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing,
but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away.
If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!
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