re: #426 Daniel Ballard

Geez I get all that. “Some idiot VP with a flash drive.” As if that very same thing could not happen at a PD or city municipal data server. Yes critical systems are harder to hack. And yes as you said many systems are generally not attached to the net.

Our difference comes down to this. I do not subscribe to “it’s so hard we need not have any concern” so strongly as to dismiss Sat’s point.

If I can jump in for a sec, I don’t really think it’s a case of “it’s so hard we need not have any concern”. Okay, let’s be concerned. Then what? The vast majority of us can’t do anything but worry about it, which doesn’t help. There are network engineers out there who specialize in security. They’re on it—all day, every day.

If you we want to be concerned, then it should start with education and trying to get college kids interested in network security careers. There aren’t a lot of truly excellent, experienced network security specialists out there who can handle securing massive networks*, and the ones that are out there are severely overworked & under-appreciated. We need more of them, and the need will only continue to grow.

*I’ve seen diagrams of existing huge networks. They’re terrifying in their complexity.