So last week DoD put on a big push to stop the Agent.btz variant. They disabled removable media types from activating or being used on Microsoft Windows machines. Good thing to do. Virus have always traveled through this kind of media. Floppy drives in the 80′s and 90′s. Then when ARPAnet network public they became spreading that way and floppies were hardly used again. Now with the Internet and USB drives virus writers have two popular ways of transmission. IA(Information Assurance) types are happy to see this happen. USB’s are serious security risk to our data. The internet is not something you can get rid of. Removable drives is something however you can work around. New tools need to brought into the DoD networks to allow their work force to operate. The big issue here is DoD hosting, they need and should do it. They shouldn’t have to trust a ASP(Application Service Provider) to secure our data. It needs to be hosted, backed up and accessible to DoD Internet services. Online Filesharing and Online Office suites will be important to the way of business for our nations military. With the file sharing they can access and share with docs to those that need to read/write it any where. Online Office suites can keep the docs on a centralized storage network, with off line editing access. Any storage on the workstations or laptops will encrypted while data is resting. This will also benefit the BRAC process with all Docs being on the networks and will no longer need transfering from site to site. Then adding technology to cache/push data forward, only the information need is accessible via global Content Networks. If a doc needs to be accessed back home it can be cached to a closer location for faster access
One thought I have is. What happens if a bigger meaner virus hits windows? Do they have workstations on had for mission critical users to get back online? Are still going to be Windows? or do they use OS X, Solaris, Linux, BSD….to allow them to work again?
