Singapore To Cut Off Internet Access For Government Workers From 2017 (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Government workers in Singapore will return to a 1990s-level of net connectivity from May of 2017, as the domestic government has decided to block internet access on all of its 100,000 office computers. The decision has been made in the interests of national security, although the Draconian policy will still permit workers to forward work mails to private email addresses as necessary. Workers' own devices will be allowed to connect to the internet normally by special terminals being provided in early trials, while intra-departmental connectivity will presumably be maintained via VPN tunneling. The move comes in the direct wake of a visit to Singapore from the U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter late last week, promoting stronger security ties with Singapore in the face of the rise of China in the region.BBC News has more details.

Comments

The 90s is calling.

[Rande]

I used to have to work like this back in 1998. Internet access was severely restricted and only 1 person per division had access and you'd have to tell them what you were looking for and they'd do the search for you.

In practice, it was faster for me to walk home, search for the information I needed and walk back than to do this or reinvent the wheel when 100 people had found the same problem and had already posted a solution.

Honestly I'm more productive with internet access, even if I'm currently at work posting this while waiting for my script to finish running.

Re:"the Draconian policy"

[LichtSpektren]

Lowercase "draconian" means any (generic) kind of harsh law or treatment. Uppercase indicates that Draco himself issued this protocol.

Other Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in I.T. for a small subsidiary of a massive Singaporean defense company and I really had no idea what I was getting into, the attacks from China/APTs are completely ridiculous in terms of scale and quantity. We've had everything from traditional external attacks, stolen certificates used against us to physical attacks on-site in just the last 4 years and we're comparatively tiny with only a few hundred staff serving mostly the private sector. From what I heard, it's even worse for MINDEF. This doesn't surprise me at all and frankly, it's probably a good thing for the Singaporeans.

Standard where I work

[houghi]

Where I work this is standard. Whitelisting for the PCs. And you can ask for sites to be added. This will depend on your department, function and what not.

However there are plenty of PCs available throughout the company that DO have internet access. They are on a separate network and separate Internet connection. So we do have two networks and two internet connections.

So if you do need to do search for your work, you are still able to do so. However not at your desk. If you need it all the time, you will have access all the time.

The majority of the people does NOT need Internet access all the time. Want to check your email? Do that before you start, during your lunch break, you 10 minute break in the morning or the afternoon or after work.

This is not even about wasting time, because you can do that reading a newspaper. This is about people clicking on a file and unwilling let a trojan in and we become another company on /. who was hacked, We know we are being targeted. Nothing serious till now.