CS459/559 - Network Security - Week 1 Assignment

(Homework must be submitted electronically to summers_wayne@ColumbusState.edu or hand delivered to my mailbox by noon MST Thursday each week.) This assignment is due on January 28, 1999.
Late assignments will be subject to up to a 25% deduction in points per day. No credit will be given for assignments that are more than one week late.

With one or two of your classmates, write up a draft of a Computer Security Policy Document for the computer lab in LH2. You should use Appendix D (pp. 371-374) as a model, but also look at sample policy documents on the web. You may also use any of the software tools available for generating computer security policy documents.
Participate in the Collabra discussion group (CS459 on the server cs.nmhu.edu).
- Discuss your views on Government Policies and Regulations concerning computer security including the U.S. government's policy of regulating encryption algorithms.
- "In September 1998, the Electronic Disturbance Theater, a group of activists that practices politically driven cyber civil-disobedience, launched an attack aimed at disabling a Pentagon Web site by flooding it with requests. The Pentagon responded by redirecting the requests to a Java applet programmed to issue a counteroffensive. The applet flooded the browsers used to launch the attack with graphics and messages, causing them to crash.
  The incident raises issues all user organizations will soon have to grapple with, if they haven't already. When you detect a break-in, should you launch a counterattack in order to protect your network? Is law enforcement capable of stopping cybercrime and can it be trusted to keep investigations quiet? If not, don't corporations have a right to defend themselves?" Striking back Corporate vigilantes go on the offensive to hunt down hackers.
  By Winn Schwartau Network World, 01/11/99
- You should answer the these questions in the e-mail.
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summers_wayne@ColumbusState.edu