Intrusion prevention in primary education

Why school systems need to jump on this network security bandwagon
David R. Bailey

As an information systems consultant who has been working with educational technology and security for nearly two decades, I have seen a lot of security breaches. I have seen students change their own or other students’ grades for a price, publicly post all of the teachers’ private information including social security numbers, break into other student’s accounts in order to frame schoolyard foes, and download files which forced a complete shutdown of a large metropolitan school district’s network and systems due to subsequent computer virus and worm activity. I’ve seen trusted WAN administrators set up unprotected personal servers on a school network and open it to the Internet, all without the knowledge of the school system, which concluded with the expected result of such actions. I’ve even seen security controls become the attack vector, such a compromised anti-virus update server saturating an Internet connection as a newly commissioned child pornography server.

http://www.techlearning.com/article/14906

Things I never thought I'd hear a Communist Leader in Moscow say...

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin Condemns Socialism
Speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
January 28, 2009

Excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence is another possible mistake.

True, the state's increased role in times of crisis is a natural reaction to market setbacks. Instead of streamlining market mechanisms, some are tempted to expand state economic intervention to the greatest possible extent.

The concentration of surplus assets in the hands of the state is a negative aspect of anti-crisis measures in virtually every nation.

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.

Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123317069332125243.html

Hello,

I thought you'd be interested in this story. This is another good example of how court systems and politicians across the country are slowly chipping away at the rights of the parents versus the state to raise children.

This ruling appears to require state approval for a parent to school their child. Basically, the court ruled that homeschooling is not a constitutional right and therefore, the parent must have state teaching credentials to homeschool their own children. This case can be used by other legal cases as precident, unless depublished (to restrict the effect of the ruling to only this particular case) or alternatively have it overturned by a superior court.

California Court of Appeal rules parents must be credentialed to home school their kids
http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?S=7984276

If you're interested in some ways to help stop this rampant growth of government intrusion into the family and information about the effects of judicial activism, I've found some resources that might be of interest.

Petition to Request Depublishing
https://www2.hslda.org/Registrations/DepublishingCaliforniaCourtDecision/

Home School Organizations - State and Local
http://www.home-school.com/groups/

Thanks and take care,

David

I admit that I love Thanksgiving. I, like most, also love to celebrate Christmas and Halloween, but I have to say that Thanksgiving holds an especially important place for me. I observe the shopping frenzies that surround Halloween and Christmas, even coming to define the holidays for many, and yet Thanksgiving has no such rush, unless you want to count the stacks of frozen turkeys and stuffing at the local grocery stores.

I was born on the 22 of November, a day that always falls on the fourth week of the month. Specifically, it falls on an important Thursday every six or seven years, although the period from 1990 to 2001 marked a twelve year departure from this cycle because of variations in the calendar. Thanksgiving Day is close at hand as I write this, and I often think about the holiday, it’s origins and what it means to us today.

As any elementary school child can tell you, Thanksgiving Day is a tradition in our country dating back to the early European settlers in Plymouth, Massachusetts, known as Pilgrims. Members of the Wampanoag tribe and the Pilgrims had a three-day feast in 1621, because they could. Life had not been so kind to the settlers in prior years, causing the starvation of many. Nearly half of their number had died of disease, starvation, and exposure.

The first official national day of thanksgiving was held in 1789 when President George Washington declared Thursday, November 26th to be a “day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” They had a lot to be thankful for, as the nation had just achieved what the world powers of the day had thought impossible. They had formed a new nation out 13 separate states and ratified a new constitution, which now has lasted for well over 200 years.

The uniform, regular national observance of Thanksgiving wasn’t started until 1863 when another President, Abraham Lincoln, issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation to declare a yearly holiday in late November. The nation had a lot to be thankful for then, too. The civil war, in which so much life had been lost, was nearing an end. Lincoln stated that “The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. [This is] a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

To me, Thanksgiving is a time to gather those you love around you, family and closest friends, and spend some time discussing not the things which separate us, but the things that bring us together. It is a time to acknowledge the hand of a greater power than ourselves in the good things of life. Even the atheist can acknowledge that circumstances could be less kind and giving. It is a time of introspection, a time to forget strife and struggle, a time to cast off the negativity and bitterness, and a time to celebrate that which is worth celebrating.

It is hard to imagine a people more blessed than us here today. We truly enjoy a bounty unimaginable to most throughout the places and ages of the world. This is something worth recognizing and considering. And during the coming holiday season to remember to share the goodness in our lives with those who have less of it than us.

Ultimately, I love Thanksgiving Day because it celebrates the things that money can't buy... apologies to the turkey farmers.

http://david.baileynet.org/thanks-keyhole.html

June 15, 2007

Google Inc.
Keyhole Division
Building # 41
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Dear Keyhole Division Employees:

I thought I'd take a moment to express my appreciation for your wonderful product that has become Google Earth.

I'm a church clerk for a congregation, we call them wards, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“Mormons”) living in Holly Springs and Apex, North Carolina. As you might already be aware, one thing us Mormons like to do is be prepared for emergencies. In this area, we're getting ready for hurricane season, although sometimes we also have ice storms
and the occasional chemical fire.

I'm tasked with maintaining a map of the boundaries of the ward, they're geographically set similar to Catholic parishes, including the positions of all church members within the boundaries.

I had been trying to do this in Microsoft MapPoint, which is a good product, but obviously only a few our leaders have access to and there aren't funds to purchase it for everyone who would need it. So I tried to distribute the map information via PDF files. Unfortunately, PDF files become unwieldy when making them big enough to view each individual name on a map covering a large area. The names become so small you cannot see them without zooming in very closely, and so lose the ability to compare names spatially for planning purposes.

I was also considering using an open-source product, such as GRASS, but the thought of getting everyone running the software and able to use it left me realizing that was not a workable solution. I can barely figure out how to get it running myself, let alone teach others.

I've been a fan of Google Earth for a while, but am just becoming aware of its ability to allow you to create and distribute geographically-based data sets. Using it, I was able to map the ward boundaries, place important points, such as the church building, which can be used for a shelter, and local merchants which sell important emergency supplies, and places on the map for each member within the boundaries.

And because Google Earth is easy to install and use, runs on Windows, Macs, and Linux, and can be used without charge for the basic version, I can create datasets and share them with the ward
leaders who can then use the information to help out the local members and community in the most effective way.

Thank you for your excellent work. This would not have been possible without your efforts.

Sincerely,

David Bailey
Ward Clerk
Holly Springs Ward
Apex North Carolina Stake

Whew,

I am glad to announce after several months of effort and the help of many talented people, I have completed editing the Center for Internet Security eDirectory and OES: NetWare security benchmarks.

The eDirectory benchmark was released about a month ago and the OES: NetWare
benchmark should be going up soon on CIS's website.

The next step will be creating a benchmark for OES: Linux, which is at this point, perhaps even more important to the community than even OES: NetWare because Linux is a bigger attack target than NetWare, and is the more common platform to deploy services atop today.

The challenge with NetWare today is that so many people are using it in the field (yes, it's still very common in the region I work in within government and education verticals) but it seems that there are not many within the IT industry who have remained current on it. I hope these security benchmarks will help with the IT administrator charged with keeping these systems secure.