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.
Received on Tue Jan 29 00:29:49 2008