That’s the philosophy behind the US Federal Government’s Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative. Considering that there are 4,300 gateways between government networks and the Internet it is probably a good idea to get that number down. Of course, anyone who has managed a really large network realizes that the number of connections you know about and the number there actually are could differ by a large factor. According to this article in Federal Computer Weekly the OMB’s target for Internet gateways is 100. That seems more manageable. Since there are more government agencies than that it means that there will be a loss of control by some departments over their own connections. Considering some of the lousy track records of some of those departments, that might be a good thing.
Normally I would be one of the crowd that points out the sheer stupidity of setting arbitrary targets like 100 Internet Connections. The cost of complying and the resources deployed could be better spent on creating a secure perimeter and enforcing access and data protection policies. But IT security is in such a shambles within the Fed draconian measures such as this are called for. If the problem is too big to solve, cut it down to a manageable size. Too bad we can’t do that for the entire Federal bureaucracy!
