The best bet for securing a computer for the government would be to follow their "bibles". Those would be DoD Directive 8500.1 which gives a high level overview of the requirements of securing the computer, DoD Instruction 8500.2, which tells you how to implement the instructions in 8500.1. It is alot cheaper for you to do it and just takes a little time and effort. Having the vendor do it is an option, but you're still having to continuously update the machine for patches and security fixes so IMHO, knowing what's on the machine by building it yourself is easier. The DoD also puts out security scripts that are freely downloaded that check your security configuration, I'd also recommend using those tools as well as the guidelines outlined by the NSA on their web site (again, free download).
And building a computer is one thing, you just have to remember that you have to make sure that the computer is stored in a secure facility before the government will give you permission to post any sort of classified information on it and that's a subject for another posting. Hope this helped.
Slashdot Mirror
The best bet for securing a computer for the government would be to follow their "bibles". Those would be DoD Directive 8500.1 which gives a high level overview of the requirements of securing the computer, DoD Instruction 8500.2, which tells you how to implement the instructions in 8500.1. It is alot cheaper for you to do it and just takes a little time and effort. Having the vendor do it is an option, but you're still having to continuously update the machine for patches and security fixes so IMHO, knowing what's on the machine by building it yourself is easier. The DoD also puts out security scripts that are freely downloaded that check your security configuration, I'd also recommend using those tools as well as the guidelines outlined by the NSA on their web site (again, free download).
And building a computer is one thing, you just have to remember that you have to make sure that the computer is stored in a secure facility before the government will give you permission to post any sort of classified information on it and that's a subject for another posting. Hope this helped.