secure e-mail

[lowtone]

/*snip
NASA HONORED FOR COMPLETING E-GOVERNMENT SECURITY PROGRAM

The White House this week honored NASA for its
successful completion of a program to ensure the security of
federal e-government initiatives.

NASA was honored at a Cross-Certification Ceremony sponsored
by the Federal Public Key Infrastructure Bridge Certification
Authority (FBCA). By "cross certifying," NASA and three other
agencies -- the Department of Agriculture's National Finance
Center, the Department of Treasury and the Department of
Defense -- will be able to send and receive secure e-mail
across organizations. Secure government-wide information
systems, and the secure exchange of information within the
government, are essential elements of homeland security, said
Paul Strassmann, NASA's Acting Chief Information Officer.

The cross-certification is one part of the Administration's
eAuthentication Initiative, which in turn is part of the
Electronic Government Initiatives of the President's 2002
Management Agenda. The eAuthentication Initiative provides
authentication services to the other 24 initiatives, which
are designed to better link the federal government to
citizens, businesses, and state and local governments, as
well as improve the federal government's internal efficiency.

For NASA, recognition by FBCA culminates the Agency's four-
year effort to build a public key infrastructure to
strengthen and secure its information systems. The event
clearly demonstrated NASA's success in implementing multiple
pieces of information technology-related legislation, said
Strassmann.
*/snip

just something i thought i would share

[Tedob1]

they've only been getting hacked since as long as they've had computers.

Duh!...maybe we should secure the network?!?

[Turing_Machine]

I remember looking into the NASA Lewis center in Cleveland, Ohio, when the originally connected to the Cleveland Freenet.

For those who have never heard of the Freenet, it was a precursor to the public internet that was born around 1985 or so. It was a BBS system that was expanded into a terminal services program that allowed people to search the interlinked libraries of Cuyahoga County (the county where Cleveland resides).

Anyway, I remember perusing employee lists and such, and having WAY too much access back then.

My stepfather worked as a consultant with a company making landing gear and such, and I was able to not only find his company information, but his information and his security clearances inside of Lewis Space Center.

Also amazing was the sheer volume and complexity of the linked systems inside of their annex to the freenet.

Yes, most of their secure information is inside their proprietart nastran (like fortran, but not) systems, but someone with a bit of curiosity and technical ability would be able to get information that by todays standards would be considered espionage.

And it was available, and there was no logging at that time.

I'm glad to see that they are more secure than they were yesterday, but speaking as someone who knows, they are already LIGHTYEARS ahead of themselves as they were when they started.

** For sale **
Rocket plans.

just kidding.