Today at 7:45am, Steven H. McCown said:
Firstly, (correct me if I'm wrong), but the church has stated that those types of church programs are only to be put on computers owned by the church.
This is correct.
I've understood that to be computers donated to the church, too.
Not sure about this, but sounds plausible. Though, unless your clerk's office computer is donated, it shouldn't come into play. The _only_ computer in your ward/brach that should have MLS on it is the clerk's office computer. (I'm pretty sure you can't set up the same unit in MLS on in multiple places.) The only additional computer in the stake that should have MLS is the stake clerk's office.
However, they are NOT supposed to be on even a church-owned computer with a standard modem. The church modems (e.g., used for tithing reporting) have some ID/encryption hardware for security. IOW, putting MLS on the laptop is not really allowed. Nevertheless, feel free to check with Church HQ and see what they say. It's better to follow the proper procedure with somebody else's information and programs......
The modem thing, if it ever was true, is no longer true. The last computers we've had to have replaced in our stake have been standard issue Dell computers, with plain old normal modems (no more of the external ones), and that's what MLS uses to connect to HQ. Even before, when they had us replace one of our faulty external modems, they had us go buy a standard external modem at the computer store. Nothing special about it either. I believe the reason for the external modems was to simplify the configuration... it's much easier to troubleshoot problems with external modems than internal ones, because there are a lot fewer places that things can go wrong, and you have a lot more info about the modem's status.
Secondly, if you are going to run a Linux laptop and you're worried about data being compromised, then you should encrypt it. The easiest way is to setup an encrypting file system. You can set it up so that every byte on the disk is encrypted -- even the boot sector. The master key would be stored on a CD that must be in the drive in order for the machine to boot. There are a couple of these out there and they (the good ones) run flawlessly with very little overhead. AES encryption is really fast. I've implemented it with < 10% overhead -- in software.
That sounds like a reasonable solution for encrypting your data. It isn't a bad idea, but I also don't think it's necessary to meet the minimum standard of care and diligence in protecting the confidential data for which we have stewardship.
IMHO, the tools we have for getting data out of MLS are the print and export functions, and the things they let us export are probably all that it is good to try and get out of the system. We shouldn't try to go beyond what they want us to do. Just as much care should be exercised with that information, whether it's electronic, on paper, or otherwise. If I lose my Palm, or have my laptop stolen, or leave my big 3-ring binder out somewhere, it's effectively the same problem. In order to effectively perform our callings, we often need access to that information, and sometimes we're not within easy reach of the MLS computer. That's why MLS will print and export things. It's not evil to export them and print them, and use the information as it was designed to be used. If they only wanted us to export encrypted information, they'd tell us so. They do ask that we be careful with the data, but that applies to everything we see, hear, or do in our callings.
Mac -- Mac Newbold MNE - Mac Newbold Enterprises, LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.macnewbold.com/ _______________________________________________ Ldsoss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss
