http://www.fcw.com/online/news/151440-1.html By John Rendleman FCW.com January 28, 2008 The Defense Department is considering a policy that would banish all traffic not proven to be purely official DOD business from its networks, said Lt. Gen. Charles Croom, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, last week at the Institute for Defense and Government Advancements Network Centric Warfare 2008 conference in Washington. The proposal to ban non-official traffic from the network is intended to increase the networks security and stability by reducing the number of times malicious software code enters DOD networks, Croom said. DODs consideration of the proposal, however, is in the preliminary stages, and its too early to predict if the department will proceed with the idea, Croom said. The rationale for radically revamping DODs network usage policies is to find the right balance between encouraging communications and innovation by allowing users to freely share information, while also protecting the security and integrity of DOD systems and information by banning potentially harmful traffic. In practical terms, the rules are intended to eliminate traffic thats entering DOD networks as employees surf Web sites that arent expressly banned or blocked but that would be difficult to justify as necessary purely for official business, Croom said. DOD hasnt yet calculated what percentage of the traffic on its networks now violates the rules, he said. Unofficial early estimates, however, are that 70 percent of the traffic on DOD networks today is unofficial and would be banned, said sources close to the department. ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to InfoSec News http://www.infosecnews.org/mailman/listinfo/isn
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Mon Jan 28 2008 - 22:47:59 PST