Air Force to Get "Cyber Sidearms"

mlbtaz writes to mention that techs working on Air Force networks will soon be getting "cyber sidearms" to help alert them to potential security breaches. "The tool could be a small piece of software installed on Air Force computers or it could be a simple mechanism for taking a screenshot and relaying it to security experts, said Maj. Gen. William Lord, who will soon take command of the Air Force's provisional Cyber Command. In an interview this week, Lord said service officials have not made a final decision about which technology they will use for the program. "

Comments

Real World Threats vs. AirForce TinFoil

[billstewart]

The wider development world has *lots* of tools in this space

• Virus checkers
• Personal Firewalls
• Anti-Phishing DNS servers
• Remote Sysadmin Printscreen Tools
• Microsoft Patch Tuesday
• Intrusion-Detection / Intrusion-Prevention servers
• etc.

Putting a cute name on it is a way to get funding and get the users to use the tools they're given and of course

get reputation points for your department. You'll find that the Real World has difficulty with those problems just like the Air Force, and if you don't have an annoying central IT administration group keeping an iron grip on everybody's entire software configuration, it's really hard to make sure everything reasonable gets done.