DISA suffers Y2K hiccups in Ohio
Year 2000 maintenance work at the Defense Information Systems Agency megacenter in Columbus, Ohio, caused temporary outages affecting several logistics and financial applications for three days last week. On Sunday, March 21, data center employees installing vendor-supplied microcode upgrades to direct-access storage devices and tape devices encountered intermittent incompatibility problems in three of the nine DASD devices that were upgraded, DISA spokeswoman Betsy Flood said.
Grants system makes tracks
Federal Transit Administration officials credit luck and a no-frills approach for faster-than-expected completion of the client-server Transportation Electronic Award and Management system. The agency is nearly a year ahead of schedule in fielding the dial-up version of its mainframe TEAM grants administration system, officials said. FTA administers $5 billion yearly in federal transportation grants.
Lab Notes
Catching the bug? The GCN Lab has warned before about virus hoaxes, but this time the warning is about a real virus called CIH 1.2 that can overwrite hard drives and corrupt flash BIOSes. The virus supposedly will strike a large number of PCs on April 26. Earlier versions were activated on the 26th of the month and tried to corrupt BIOSes. Such attacks rarely succeed because of the specialized nature of BIOS software. But disk
News
USDA deputy CIO Ira Hobbs calls for more IT training during a CIO panel keynote address.
10 to miss Y2K deadline
More than 90 percent of federal systems will meet the Clinton administration's March 31 deadline for agencies to have all mission-critical systems ready for 2000, the administration's year 2000 czar said this month. Ten of the government's 24 major agencies will have one or more systems to finish up in the coming months, according to the latest status reports that agencies sent to the Office of Management and Budget last month.
Get a grip on managing your network
Large networks can be as inscrutable as the Cheshire Cat. Understanding their connections takes plenty of infrastructure knowledge. Any administrator who wants to manage assets or find performance bottlenecks must have a map. The GCN Lab took a look at three tools, Visio Enterprise, Micrografx NetworkCharter Pro and netViz 4.0, for mapping devices connected to a network. Each takes a slightly different approach that fits specific purposes.
Cross your t's and dot your i's—digitally
The Cross pen, that ultimate analog tool, has gone digital. Cross Pen Computing Group designed the CrossPad XP to take handwritten notes and transfer them to a PC. It looks like a black clipboard, except for a tiny LCD window at the bottom, and it loads standard 6- by 9-inch yellow memo pads.
DOD tests online workspace| GCN
Mitre Corp. has developed a suite of integrated collaboration tools that could change the way Defense Department staffs work together. Mitre's Collaborative Virtual Workspace (CVW) is a multiuser object-oriented computing environment in which people interact with documents and one another in a shared virtual space. CVW has audio, video, chat and whiteboard features.
Win 2000 use will require prep work
If your agency plans to upgrade to Microsoft Windows 2000 after Microsoft Corp. releases the scalable operating system this fall, prepare for some changes. Microsoft's technology specialists manager Sean Murphy this month described the OS as "a very different animal" from earlier Windows versions. Speaking at FOSE trade show in Washington, Murphy said a third and final beta version of Win 2000, due in the next several months, will be feature-complete and almost ready for release.
Cyberterrorists visit sites before attack, so look for footprints
Call it techno-terrorism, cyberwarfare or Internet intelligence gathering, but what the Defense Department is experiencing goes far beyond amateur hacking into military networks. Hack attacks are escalating, and not only on DOD networks. To fight back, you need to know your vulnerabilities—what hackers using the latest tools can find out. GCN last year covered the onslaught of low-level network probes that seem coordinated from multiple locations. Early this month, the Pentagon said the systematic probes are being
Secure Unix server connections
ICE.PPN from J. River Inc. of Minneapolis, a PC-to-Unix connectivity developer, secures access to Unix servers for on-site and remote users. It guards end-to-end connections with or without a firewall. Its protection relies on the Secure Sockets Layer, Digital Signature Standard certificates for server authentication, Diffie-Helman key exchange and triple Data Encryption Standard encryption. It encrypts all Telnet and File Transfer Protocol sessions.
AOL, Linux officials are keynote highlights at April's AIIM show
The AIIM '99 trade show in Atlanta from April 11 to 15 will have as keynoters Ted Leonsis, president and chief executive officer of America Online Studios, and Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system. A special government conference track set for Tuesday evening, April 13, and all the next day will cover imaging in South Carolina's retirement systems, case studies in county document automation and confidentiality issues in electronic dissemination of federal documents.
Treasury seeks savings with comm upgrade
Treasury's contract with TRW lists neither a maximum nor a minimum amount to be paid for TCS work. A new fee-for-service arrangement will let the Treasury Department build its backbone network in a fashion and at a price that will not break the bank, senior Treasury officials said.
HUD uses WinBatch launcher to connect to mainframe apps
The Housing and Urban Development Department has found a software launcher that simplifies connecting to mainframe applications and improves desktop PC productivity. WinBatch from Wilson WindowWare Inc. of Seattle can perform pre- and post-actions when calling an executable file, said Douglas R. Reese, a HUD computer specialist. Reese said WinBatch starts up internally developed applications as well as commercial apps for computer-aided design, online research and travel management. It also launches Sybase PowerBuilder and Microsoft SQL Server
Energy secretary orders offices to screen e-mail
In the wake of the espionage scandal at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., the Energy Department is taking steps to more closely analyze and screen sensitive e-mail sent by workers at its facilities. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson this month told the Senate Select Intelligence Committee that his department wants an additional $8 million added to its fiscal 2000 counterintelligence budget to implement a cyberinformation security program.
BREAKING NEWS
The Defense Information Systems Agency last week awarded three separate Defense Information Systems Network transmission services contracts worth a combined $600 million to AT&T Government Markets of Washington, MCI WorldCom Inc. and Sprint Communications Co. Transmission services under the DISN Transmission Services-CONUS Extension contracts include sub-T1 and other point-to-point services to all locations within the continental U.S. not covered by the $5 billion DISN Transmission Services-CONUS contract awarded to AT&T Corp. last year.
CIOs tell agencies to prepare for post-2000 security push
As agencies attempt to work through a myriad of rules for critical infrastructure protection, the new leadership of the Chief Information Officers Council has published guidance to all the guidance. At least four significant provisions from various government sources for critical infrastructure protection already exist, said Thomas R. Burke, assistant commissioner for the General Services Administration Federal Technology Service's Office of Information Security.
Agency execs debate seat management pros, cons
Just who in an agency should drive a seat management program? Some in government say it is the job of the chief information officer. Others say the responsibility falls to the chief financial officer. The issue was the subject of a spirited and sometimes terse debate this month during a breakfast panel sponsored by the Association for Federal IRM at the FOSE trade show in Washington.
Group works to build a presence in tech fields
Math is for girls. So are science and computers. And information technology offers women a great choice of careers. That's the message of the nonprofit professional association, Women in Technology. Women who work in IT need such a group "to provide a voice and a forum," WIT president Belkis Leong-Hong told the House Committee on Science last year.
FAA, unable to meet OMB deadlines, keeps its own schedule
The Federal Aviation Administration will meet its own March 31 target date for completing year 2000 testing, FAA's year 2000 czar said. But that is three months past the Office of Management and Budget's deadline. And FAA also will miss OMB's final readiness deadline of March 31.
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