Abstract
With the September 2002 introduction of the Whitehouse's Cyber Security Plan, Federal agencies are paying closer attention to securing assets. Traditionally, open source technologies have been inaccurately viewed by many as less secure than proprietary ones, but the British government has actually concluded that open source products provide users higher security and cost-effectiveness than "closed solutions." With these new directives and stagnant budgets, many agencies are realizing the valuable opportunities presented by open source solutions. In recent reports, including a Fall 2002 MITRE study on open source security deployments in the federal government, Snort --created in 1998 by speaker Martin Roesch-- was revealed as one of the most widely used tools. Snort, an award-winning open source intrusion detection technology, has over 600,000 downloads to date. In this talk, Roesch will address several ways to enhance the manageability and flexibility of intrusion detection tools such as Snort. This presentation is for Federal government chief information officers, chief security officers and other management level employees charged with network security. Learning objectives Be aware of and understand open source security options Examine the benefits of open source technologies in government infrastructure Evaluate strategies for protecting government networks from attack |
