Forwarded from: Dave Dittrich <dittrichat_private> > It will mean that "anybody can get any information at any time," > Stenbit said in a meeting with reporters Aug. 24. He took over the > CIO post Aug. 7. > . . . > Finally, Stenbit said he is going to focus on the reliability of > information systems. "Once we start depending upon them, wed better > make sure theyre there," he said. I'm glad to hear that he is at least saying up front that reliance on digital information for targetting is a huge potential risk. Consider what would happen if your enemy can change GPS data or targeting sensor data to make your systems think THEIR capitol city is really YOUR capitol city! "Identify friend or foe" doesn't work when your sensor data can be made to lie about who "foe" is. > Overall, he said that information technology can help free up > money from the non-fighting arm of the military, thereby making > more money available for force structure and modernization. This part scares me. I believe that this is one of the fundamental problems with the dot-gone economy, where C{TIE}O's consider their application of technology to "free up money" that can be spent elsewhere (e.g., huge travel budgets, huge executive signing bonuses and golden parachutes, huge executive salaries, a larger emphasis on marketing above engineering, etc.) I believe that the flaw in the logic here is that the application of technology ITSELF comes with hidden costs (in the form of security needs), and does not have nearly the effect on "freeing money" that non-technical and overly optimistic CIOs believe. The end result is that risk exposure is increased, preventative measures and sound engineering (which include security from step one) do not take place, and the legal system is used as a band-aid to cover up the hemoraging that results. -- Dave Dittrich Computing & Communications dittrichat_private University Computing Services http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich University of Washington PGP key http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/pgpkey.txt Fingerprint FE 97 0C 57 08 43 F3 EB 49 A1 0C D0 8E 0C D0 BE C8 38 CC B5 - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Aug 30 2001 - 01:14:48 PDT