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US CTO Tries To Wean the White House Off Floppy Disks
schnell writes: MIT grad and former Google exec Megan J. Smith is the third Chief Technical Officer of the United States and the first woman to hold the position created five years ago by President Obama. But, as a New York Times profile points out, while she fights to wean the White House off BlackBerries and floppy disks, and has introduced the President to key technical voices like Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf to weigh in on policy issues, her position is deliberately nebulous and lacking in real authority. The President's United States Digital Service initiative to improve technology government-wide is run by the Office of Management and Budget, and each cabinet department has its own CIO who mandates agency technical standards. Can a position with a direct access to the President but no real decision-making authority make a difference?
For a security sensitive place, like the US govt, I think lack of networking, and using floppy disks to transfer files is a good thing. It is harder to sneak out large amounts of data undetected. Doesn't the Kremlin use typewriters now?
Not really survivable.
Or more to the point, not any more.
Back in the day, floppies were amazing. Quite pricy but nuless you slid your finger across the surface (later slid the cover open and did the same), or hacked it apart with scissors, they basically worked and retained data very reliably.
They were quite expensive.
Somewhere towards the end of their reign of dominance, more when they started to be pushed out by being too small to be of any use and cheap CD-Rs (not USB back then---it worked like crap) they got super cheap and started to massively suck. Some would work only a few times before conking out.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Hopefully the CTO is aspiring to get the white house off of floppy disks for a solid reason beyond just the age of the technology. There is likely a good reason why floppies are still being used and that needs to be taken into mind when trying to replace them with newer technology. After all, we saw an article not that long ago that the nuclear missile sites in the US still use 8 inch floppies, but there is no solid reason to get them away from that.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I can see how govt would hate using thumb drives (a rogue thumb drive could mimic any USB device),
The government is large. A demand that any driver be signed by the maker (with the proper key loaded into the government PKI) would eliminate 99% of such attacks. All USB storage must have a key.txt in the root with a valid key.
Problems getting manufacturers going along with it? You are the US government. "Do what I ask, or we'll eliminate your stuff from procurement for someone that does. And if you complain publicly, we'll refuse to buy from anyone who uses your stuff."
Security doesn't happen until someone demands it (and pays for it). The government should be leading the charge, not NSA-style trying to hold everyone back. Double DES is good enough for anyone.
Learn to love Alaska
Think god I had a city college education! The contracting company for IBM hired to fresh out of high school students who thought they were hot stuff because they can unbox a Dell computer without looking at the unboxing diagram on the box. The job was simple: unplugged the token ring cable, plugged in the Ethernet cable, and test the high-bandwidth network video application for 300 workstations. They couldn't bother to read the instruction sheet, plugged the Ethernet cable into the token ring card, which supported both 10BASE2 and twisted pair cables, and didn't test the video application to catch their mistake. I made an extra four hours in OT pay and left the job at 3:30AM in the morning.
Life-long lesson learned: You make more money being the guy who cleans up other people's mistakes.