Steven Ashley

Federal government knocks California state websites offline (Download Squad)

Oct 5th 2007 7:32PM I really have to wonder what the Government I.T. Security procedures are, after this latest gaff. Isn't the first rule of administrating anything in I.T., before making a change, make a backup copy in case you screw up whatever your changing. And the second rule, know how to restore from your backup.

The Fed employee evidently did not know one of those rules since the reason it took 7 hours to recover, because it happened at the end of a work day, it took that long to find someone who knew how to recover from the error.

Last week, in response to news of Chinese hackers had broken into Defense Department computers, I said:

The U.S. Government needs to wakeup the severity of the security problems we are currently having and be made aware just how terrible they could get. Then government needs to get serious in mandating information security protocols on sensitive material both public and private.

Until they do, I know I'm going to sleep a little less secure at night, how about you?

How much worse to these accidents need to get, than taking down all the governments websites of the countries largest state, and no, I'm still not sleeping very well.