More on the security issue. If you think the civilian world has problems, just imagine being tech support for the military drones and getting a call one day to troubleshoot your aircraft. The more you investigate, the more you become convince the problem is a virus and now you are becoming alarmed – this virus is recording every keystroke the pilot is making during his flight. Maybe this is not such a problem for standard flight, but when you consider the drone is the preferred reconnaissance method of the United States Army, the virus is taken to a whole new level. So you spend hours cleaning off every trace of the bad bug and pat yourself on the back once you realize your system is wiped clean. The long hard night’s work was rewarded. Until the logs are checked after the next day’s flight only to report the virus is back. Recording every keystroke and byte of information the flight generated. And you spend another sleepless night retracing your steps, hoping to come up this time with a more perfect solution. “’’We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,’ says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. ‘We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.’” This is not a report any security tech wants to give, nor any department head needs the nightmare of hearing. At this point, however, the problem is already out of your hands. Because, you see, the issue is not in your ability to clean a virus. The problem originated with the developer’s ability to safely lock down the software and system at its inception.
Yet, if the deep pockets of the United States military continue to run into these security pitfalls, we should all take heed all the more to lock down our sensitive documents and materials. There is no such thing as being too protective of the legal documents with which we are entrusted. When your IT department issues a new set of security guidelines, it is probably due to a breach in the current system or hopefully averting one before it occurs.
Security failures affect us all – our jobs, the quality of our work days and the processes we take to complete our work. By following procedure, we can best position ourselves to ourselves and our organization for security and stability in an ever insecure and unstable world.
