Re: Aside from Firewall ..

[Crispin Cowan <crispin () cse ogi edu>]

Thomas Crowe wrote:

> I would sat that the only reason for Digital Cert. based
> authentication or VPN encryption is if you are communicating over a
> "public" network. IOW If there is ANYONE else on the wire that should
> not see the transmissions then by all means encrypt the transmissions
> AND require secure authentication. However if the circuit is direct
> point to point between 2 trusted networks, then it is really a waste
> of time, money, and other resources.

Except that all wires that leave your desktop should be considered
"public", because there is no physical way to detect whether someone has
tapped the wire.  This is especially true if the wire leaves your
building, or if the wire goes into a closet that's shared with other
organizations.

Since you have no way of determining that you're beaing tapped, the
expense of protecting your privacy should be compared against the cost
of getting hacked.  Since SSH is free and convenient, I basically never
send any personal data anywhere without encrypting it.

Crispin
-----
 Crispin Cowan, Research Assistant Professor of Computer Science, OGI
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