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US Government to Have Only 50 Gateways
Narrative Fallacy brings us a story about the US government's plan to reduce the roughly 4,000 active internet connections used by its civilian agencies to a mere 50 highly secure gateways. This comes as part of the government's response to a rise in attacks on its networks.
"Most security professionals agreed that the TIC security improvements and similar measures are long overdue. 'We should have done this five years ago, but there wasn't the heart or the will then like there is now,' said Howard Schmidt, a former White House cyber security adviser. 'The timetable is aggressive,' he said, but now there is a sense of urgency behind the program. Small agencies that won't qualify for their own connections under TIC must subcontract their Internet services to larger agencies."
Are you kidding?
Trying to maintain standards and practices across 4,000 gateway points vs 50. Let alone the agency bureaucracy that would be involved in doing site checks and working across various agency boundaries would be a nightmare. It would take eons to get those things in place to do consistent auditing and management to ensure standards and procedures are followed, let alone actually do them. Might as well consolidate bandwidth costs and number of checkpoints down to 50 in the process.
I could be wrong but I think this applies to only government computers and not the whole Country's Internet...
I wonder what 'Loyal Bushie Companies' are being paid back with the contracts for this work?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Government employees are allowed to own home computers connected to the real internet, where they can stroke pr0n and post wikileaks to their heart's content.
You'd have to be a dumbass to leak material via your workstation in a government facility. Actually, you wouldn't be a dumbass, you'd be a Guantanamo inmate.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Let me see...
With 50 gateways, if the internal network is built correctly (unlike say a how certain cable company does their's), then I can not think of any real net negatives except the complexity of the internal network now. But, given the serious issues the 4000 has, the complexity of the internal network is a relatively non-existent issue.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Will you have to take off your shoes and give up your toenail clipper before you can use these gateways? That's how you get real security these days.
"Unfortunately, what they've decided to do is put the data even more at risk by subcontacting to a whole bunch of subvendors without having an idea of how to secure their data much less decide who is doing a good job."
I think you misread. What they said is:
"Small agencies that won't qualify for their own connections under TIC must subcontract their Internet services to larger agencies."
I think that means they are keeping it in house so to speak and causing small agencies to contract with large agencies for Internet access. This actually makes a lot of sense and is the way smaller agencies already work for some of the other services they need.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
History shows that any "fence" or edifice to "security" is almost always, like the Great Wall designed to keep it's citizens in, rather than invaders out.
First, there is no consensus that the Great Wall was created to keep citizens in, as nice as a soundbyte as it makes. Second, history does not show what you claim it does. Off the top of my head, European castles, the Maginot Line, the fences around U.S. military bases in Vietnam, the fences Israel uses to restrict Palestinian access to Israel itself, and the fences that the U.S. attempts to use at the Mexican border to keep illegal immigrants out are all examples of fences designed to keep the "other" from coming in.
In fact, fences being used to keep _citizens_ in is relatively uncommon. They are most commonly used to keep the "other" out, to mark property lines, or to keep animals, livestock, or children within a certain area.
But in any case, what exactly is your point? That you can compare the actions of a feudal society's relationship to its people to basics of computer security in a pithy two sentence statement and be insightful? Would you also claim that the edifice of WSUS for patch management is another example of the man trying to keep the federal employees down? Your fence analogy doesn't even hold up - this is a _gate_ - designed for deliberate flow to and fro.
The article does specifically state that the monitoring systems are designed to keep certain information from leaving via the internet (whether intentionally or not) but that doesn't indicate that this is some feudal oppression system to choke the minds of federal employees. They are free to use whatever internet provider they wish when they get home, are they not? It's a firewall on steriods designed to protect government computers and data. Don't try to make it into something that it's not.
You make a series of pretty huge assumptions here, many of which are unlikely.
1) you assume that the 50 gateway points will be managed properly.
2) you assume that access to those gateway points will be managed effectively.
3) you assume that the underlying network design is intelligently put together.
Since this is government work, I would throw in an entirely different set of assumptions:
1) The contractor doing the work will be foreign.
2) The contractor doing the work will have less than solid training in putting together nationwide internet scale networks.
3) The underlying networks will mostly have already been compromised.
4) The project will take at least 2 times longer than predicted to complete.
5) The project will be considered complete before most of the network guru's here on slashdot would consider it complete.
6) The project will likely introduce a 2 or 3 point of failure potential rather than a 50 point of failure potential. If you have trouble imagining such a poor design, you haven't experience with government contracts.
I think the missing tag here is "whatcouldpossiblygowrong?". Knowing that something major WILL go wrong, as with all federal projects, you have to weigh the risk of moving forward against the risk of not moving forward. The realistic risk of moving forward is:
1) a significant portion of the networks will go down and leave several agencies without the capability of getting anything done.
2) a downtime in the network will present a very real and very dangerous national security issue.
The risk of not moving forward?
1) Data currently deemed secure is widely compromised. (in fact, this has probably already happened)
It's an arguably good idea on the surface. But really, shouldn't the nation that brought the world the internet have the most well thought out and effective network infrastructure in the world? A change to the underlying network is a solid idea. This change? This change is the result of small minded thinking and government work.
smitty, you know I love you, but I don't think I agree.
Since we're supposed to be the government (of, by and for, you know) the more places we can interface with it the better.
We've been trained by 27 years of "Conservative" control of government and media to see "government" as some alien entity over which we have no control and which only acts to make our lives unpleasant. St. Ronald was the first to really market this erroneous notion, and it really disrespects the clever and elegant plan our founding fathers laid out for us.
This meme of "drowning government in a bathtub" is so ubiquitous that even some smart people are lazily spreading it, as you have done.
If you've recently driven on a US highway, or if you're one of the unlucky ones under whom a bridge recently collapsed in Minnesota, you know first-hand what happens when "the commons" are neglected.
The strangest thing about this whole story is that we are constantly told that the US is a "Christian Nation" yet the idea of "care in common" which is anathema to Republicans is a most Christian notion. But I guess it's to be expected when hypocrisy is the new black.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You make a series of pretty huge assumptions here, many of which are unlikely. 1) you assume that the 50 gateway points will be managed properly. 2) you assume that access to those gateway points will be managed effectively. 3) you assume that the underlying network design is intelligently put together.
I think the assumption is more along the lines of:
50 gateway points are more likely to be managed properly than 4000 points.
Those 50 points will have a great deal of attention and resources allocated to them, about 80 times the amount per point of the previous 4000 points.
When the government really cares about a project (read military) they can be very intelligent, just look at the stealth bomber. They are only haphazard when it is a project that exists only to please the public (read medi-care, or social security)
We are all just people.
Why does reducing infrastructure equipment have to imply reducing functionality? You obviously don't understand the concept of consolidation. Reducing the # of devices reduces the amount of time managing and monitoring the devices. It makes managing the network easier because firewall rules can be consolidated and made simpler, along with other types of rules used throughout a network. Reducing the # of gateways to the outside world for a gov't agency or network also makes it more secure. People using those networks and the resources outside those networks can still get to those resources but those who maintain that infrastructure can better make sure it is done efficiently and more securely since they have less equipment to worry about.
This is a massive undertaking. I'm working on a consolidation right now for just one of these networks and it is just horrendous what we are up against. The government doesn't always have the same standards of documentation as contractors do which makes it even more unfair for the contractor who comes in to fix what isn't actually broken but it makes you wonder how it works in the first place given the spiderweb that exists. Now for the reality: It isn't about terrorists at all. It is about reducing cost for the taxpayers, THAT'S YOU, if you are a U.S. tax payer. Yes there are costs upfront but why would you be against spending money upfront for much greater savings down the road?
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
The times are changing my friend.
Are they abandoning the airgap policy or something?Put simply, yes, it's a bit scary and myself and various coworkers (as contractors) have questioned the change in perspective but the government seems to be moving away from air gaps, at least in 1 agency that I know of which will go unnamed for privacy and security considerations. I think classified systems will be the last to be merged but already production and non-production systems are being merged. The idea, as TFA says, is to just put security monitoring devices and filters everywhere possible to keep the classified data safe. We're talking more levels of filters and access controls than have ever been used in the past.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
You are welcome on my lawn.