Here is some really sound advice from Chad Perrin of TechRepublic, to follow up on our posting on Monday, Sept 22nd of an article about Sarah Palin's hacked email.
The moral of this story is that the intricacies of the world-wide Web must be taken into consideration by those individuals whose webs, emails, blogs, etc. are privy to sensitive information. It would be less than ingenuous for these individuals not to learn enough about the systems they are using to understand how to protect sensitive information from access by outsiders.
Politicians and campaign staff all need to be savvy enough about security not to give the game away to their rivals, at the least. More so, government officials, members of Congress and the Senate should consider themselves duty bound, even if they do not personally possess sophisticated technical skills, to be somewhat informed about how these tools work, and to be proactive about the governance in place, by putting the security of their systems into knowledgeable and capable hands. Anybody have any suggestions to add to Mr. Perrin's list? Let us know. Marlene
ChadPerrin September 18th, 2008
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=590&tag=nl.e101
How much attention would you give e-mail security if you were running for office?
One would hope that the people who run for public office in this country with promises of increased domestic security would take some pains to ensure their own security during the campaign. High priorities should of course involve things like having good bodyguards and site security teams when making public appearances, ensuring one’s campaign Web site doesn’t get defaced by people who disagree with one’s policies, and protecting e-mail privacy.While I would dearly love to see someone with an at least marginal understanding of technology get into public office from time to time, I know that might be a bit too much to ask at this point on the national political stage. Lacking personal understanding of such matters, however, one should definitely hire people who know what they’re doing and get them to advise on technical matters — and actually listen to their advice.
I could comment at
some length on the difference between people who know how to market technology
or can run a technology company and those who actually know technology sufficiently to
be credible advisers. In other words, I could comment on the inadvisability of
hiring someone like Steve Ballmer as a technology adviser. That’s not the point
of this article, though. Instead, I’ll just offer a short list of tips for
anyone who might want to run for public office and avoid the embarrassment of
failed e-mail security:
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