General Security Vision Recommendations
- Centralization and Industry standardization have developed
their short comings, hackability. “Standard” computer architectures of the
20th Century have proven that hackers will do Windows, so how do we safeguard
against this in the 21st. Here is some suggestions:
- The server needs to have speed, dual power supplies,
Raid drives, and a tape backup. Its operating system needs to be Unix or
LiNUX or Novell when possible.
- The workstations need to be Apple or non-Windows
when possible. There are many software packages (unix based, etc) making
this platform very versatile.
- Firewall and virus check software should not be
industry standard (i.e.: like Norton) where viable alternatives present
themselves.
- The obvious question is why isn’t a Windows 2000
system as secure as Microsoft boosts. The simple answer is Microsoft has
just put too many back doors into there software that are exploited by hackers
to ever make it safer than its many competitors. Secondly, if your going to
be a hacker why study and implement your mischief on a 5% market product,
when you can affect a much larger group of users by going Microsoft. Thirty
years ago one might have been able to count the number of accomplished hackers
on one hand, but today with the genie is out of the bottle we must plan our
systems accordingly.
- As educators it is easy for us to apply classroom computer
standards to all our equipment purchases. We need to look with a fresh set
of eyes and focus not on standardization, but see a design that is hacker
proof, stable and efficient for the end user to do so you need to mix your
platforms, operating systems and vendors.
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