"We no longer offer that facility for [security / safety] reasons".

How many times have I been told or read that in the last few years? Am I getting to be too much of a cynic to think that the truth is more often along the lines of "it doesn't make commercial sense to provide that any more" or "it's too much bother for us and we can get away without it". Don't get me wrong - safety and security are vital factors and I wouldn't advocate any service provider decision without taking them properly into account but I do feel they're "milked" at times; people simply won't challenge what they're told in this area, since they might appear to be unpatriotic or careless.

On line, security issues have shaped the whole way we work and many of the exciting possibilities of new technologies are muted or lost due to them; I'm not suggesting that this is all excuses, by the way, although there are a few excuses around just as the real life incident that got me going on the subject. I remember the days when I didn't need email filters. When firewalls were un-necessary. When I would have been able to allow unmoderated comments here. And I shed a tear at all the possibilities that have been stillborn too.

Even in our own training centre, we have certain security procedures - we can't be immune from them, and occasionally they'll limit legitimate use. I would prefer us NOT to need an alarm system linked to a monitoring station, and I would like to be able to allow trainees to email example files off their training machines. In each case, though, we ensure that we have good alternatives in place that mean that our students are not inconvenienced, and perhaps get something even better. Our training centre is available and staffed from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily - usually much later - and we offer a whole raft of after course resources including an automatic email to the trainees of all their coursework.
(written 2004-09-03, updated 2006-06-05)

 A163 - Web Application Deployment - Network Configuration and Security
  [3448] Checking all the systems on a subnet, using Expect and Tk - (2011-09-18)
  [2489] Parallel Pinging, using Python Threads or Expect spawn lists - (2009-11-02)
  [2052] How was my web site compromised? - (2009-02-24)
  [1904] Ruby, Perl, Linux, MySQL - some training notes - (2008-11-23)
  [1712] As different as night and tyres - (2008-07-18)
  [1666] Slow boot and terminal start on Linux boxes - (2008-06-05)
  [1408] Wireless hotel tips - FTP and Skype connections failing - (2007-10-26)
  [1073] Heartbeat script in Perl - (2007-02-09)
  [511] Domain Forwarding - 2 ways of doing it - (2005-11-29)
  [506] What are DHCP and DNS? - (2005-11-27)
  [332] Looking up IP addresses - (2005-06-01)
  [267] Searching security holes - (2005-04-04)
  [11] A bolt of lightning on Multicasting - (2004-08-11)

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An update for old friends
Security and Safety
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Autumn arrives right on time
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