Why the NSA Can't Replace 90% of Its System Administrators

An anonymous reader writes "Curious about the recently purposed NSA cuts, Courtney Nash explores a few myths about systems automation 'In the aftermath of Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA's domestic surveillance activities, the NSA has recently announced that they plan to get rid of 90% of their system administrators via software automation in order to "improve security." So far, I've mostly seen this piece of news reported and commented on straightforwardly. But it simply doesn't add up. Either the NSA has a monumental (yet not necessarily surprising) level of bureaucratic bloat that they could feasibly cut that amount of staff regardless of automation, or they are simply going to be less effective once they've reduced their staff.'"

Comments

Re:replace Windoze with Linux

[farrellj]

Windows server management is much more SysAdmin intensive than Linux server management. Most Linux Boxes are "fire and forget" after they have been configured. Windows boxes decay quickly, and need a great deal more upkeep from the SysAdmin.