[Gllug] Linux Petition

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 3 April 2012 05:59, Christopher Hunter <cehunter at gb-x.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-04-02 at 22:06 +0000, Chris Bell wrote:
>> On Mon 02 Apr, Keith Edmunds wrote:
>> >
>> > The cause may be worthy, but the likelihood of the Government migrating
>> > from Windows to Linux is zero, at least in the foreseeable future.
>> >
>>    I have been in contact with my own MP, Angie Bray MP, Parliamentary
>> Private Secretary to the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Member of
>> Parliament for Ealing Central & Acton, about the use of Free Open Source
>> Software, and there have been indications that the government has been
>> listening.
>>    My local London Borough of Ealing has been watching the results as some
>> other London Boroughs have moved towards Linux. I was told that they are
>> worried about the costs of retraining staff, although that has to happen
>> every time a new version of their existing system is released.
>>    I saw a report that the US have given up the idea of having only
>> perimeter security, and now assume that almost all networks have been
>> cracked - so just try to protect the contents. The US Air Force has been
>> working with the US government to produce a minimal ultra-secure Linux
>> distribution, and I think it is likely that the UK government is watching.
>>
>
> Chris (and all)
>
> Practically speaking, we're not concerned much about people cracking the
> access to our systems (closed or open source) - it's really not the
> problem.
>
> The real issue is the "packet flood" problem, causing "Denial of
> Service" - they probably won't gain access to anything sensitive, but
> neither will we!  These attacks leave our networks so clogged with
> malicious (and rejected) packets that they are rendered unusable.
>

"Perimeter security" is extremely old and now days ineffective.
For example, the UK government has isolated (from the internet)
networks called RLI and SLI that carry classified traffic.
If I was to add a web server to that network, even though it is not
connected to the Internet, I have to go through tough lock down
procedures, in much the same way as if it was attached to the
Internet.
Security is done more on an onion approach, with multiple layers of
security and data isolated and controlled as much as possible.
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