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Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CharleyMike who wrote (28164)	7/16/2002 6:08:25 PM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Respond to of 110655

Government devises computer security standards to fight most common Internet threats philly.com WASHINGTON (AP) - Creating a ``Good Housekeeping'' approval seal of sorts, the government is releasing standards and a software program that will help computer users configure their systems for maximum security against hackers and thieves. The program will be made available free to anyone and mandated for some federal agencies. The Pentagon, National Security Agency and other agencies will join with private partners Wednesday in announcing the security standards for computers that run Microsoft's Windows 2000. The operating system is commonly used by businesses and government. The seal of approval comes in the form of a small program that probes computers for known security flaws and makes suggestions on how to eliminate holes used by hackers. The unprecedented effort will have immediate impact. All Defense Department computers will have to meet the standards immediately. The White House is considering making the rest of the government follow suit. Experts say the keys to success will be extending the standards to home and business users, making them simple enough for the public to understand and ensuring they stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated computer attackers. ``If it's just government, it won't have as much value as if it's government and the private sector,'' said Richard Clarke, President Bush's chief of computer security. The private partners in the project have their eyes set on broadening the standards to other operating systems, including the Windows products most commonly used at home. ``It's a massive problem,'' said Clint Kreitner, head of the Center for Internet Security, a nonprofit partnership of companies and American and Canadian government agencies. ``They slap their systems on the Net and get ready to go, then wonder why they get breached in the next 10 minutes.'' The effort has brought together some of the biggest names in business, including computer chipmaker Intel Corp., Chevron and Visa -- part of the group that helped create the standards and is encouraging their use. Microsoft, which is embarking on its own efforts to makes its software more secure, has reviewed the standards and made suggestions. The standards have developed slowly, in part because security in the past frequently has been handled through technical security bulletins written for engineers. ``You'd give a 200-page document to a system administrator, and say, 'Have a nice day,''' Clarke said. ``So no one did it.'' The breadth of the problem is staggering. The technology research firm Gartner recently projected that through 2005, 90 percent of computer attacks will use known security flaws for which a solution is available but not installed. Most recent attacks were written and released by bored youngsters testing their skills, but the government is becoming more concerned about organized attacks against federal computers from terrorists or foreign governments. Several government agencies have had their own security standards for some time. What is new about Wednesday's announcement is that the various agencies have agreed on a single standard -- a difficult task that occurred about three months ago. Experts at the CIS, the NSA and Commerce's National Institute for Standards and Technology had three different candidates for standards at first. On April 18, the authors met in a room at NIST offices in Maryland. ``They were told they could leave as soon as they came to an agreement,'' said Alan Paller of the Sans Institute, a research and education group involved in the announcement. That night, they had a document several hundred pages long describing how to make Windows 2000 secure, but still usable. That was only half the battle, though. Clarke, the White House adviser, said they wanted to make it easy for federal network engineers to make the changes. To fix that, the government created the software tool that grades computer security so that everyone, from the engineers to top executives, understands how secure their computers are. The tool then recommends changes. Experts hope that private companies will adopt the standards as well and encourage software makers to ship their products in a more secure configuration. Some government agencies, including the Air Force, are considering using their procurement power to require that vendors offer more secure versions of their software based on the standards.

To: CharleyMike who wrote (28164)	7/17/2002 2:38:09 PM
From: Robert Graham	Respond to of 110655

Good that you found a solution to your problem! I think there are quality control problems with hardware that is sold. In my situation, I found a bad memory stick, another stick not operating to spec, a bad motherboard, an operating system not ready for prime time, and now....[drum roll please]...a CD Burner that cannot read a test CD without encountering several errors. I replaced the TDK VeloCD with a TEAC CDR-RW and this can read the same test CD with no errors. My poor quality LG DVD-ROM also reads the same test CD made by Nero CD Speed without errors. So at this point I can only come to one of two conclusions. I think there is allot of poor quality hardware out there. I think this can be the case. Just look at the results of the performance tests of the (relatively) new Pentium 4 motherboards. Each board can have a significantly different performance value for just the CPU part of the test, aside from memory and disk performance. There should be little or no difference in this CPU test parameter. IMO this means the basic motherboard design for the Pentium 4 CPU has not been perfected yet by the various MB manufacturers, incredible as this statement may seem. I think price competition is partly to blame. The other possibility is that my power source really screwed up my system. I would rather the former to be true than the latter. Because if the latter is true, as time goes by, I will by replacing more hardware, even after having replaced my power supply unit, or even if I were to replace my UPS if that was the culprit. By the way, for the second time, my video signal came late during the boot of Windows. But this happened after a week of operation (time slips by you know). Otherwise my system has been performing well except for that CD Burner problem. No sign of data corruption has been detected. But ever since I loaded Norton's System Works, the shutdown time of the OS has increased. Do not get me on my soapbox on how the quliaty of Symantec software has gone downhill too. If Peter Norton were not alive, he would be rolling in his grave. :-) Bob Graham