Information security Singapore style: all officials disconnected from the Internet

At this step the government has to ensure the safety of important information for state officials in computers at the workplace




Source: Bloomberg

Since May 2017 all civil servants in Singapore will lose access to the Internet in the workplace. The country's authorities have decided to use radical methods of securing important information for state officials in computers. And under a new initiative from the Internet will disconnect 100 thousand. Personal computers. However, we are not talking about the complete destruction of the networks - intranets remain, so that officials will continue to be able to share information within its local network in the workplace. In addition, you can not disable the personal device from the Internet (we are talking about tablets and phones). But in this case the employee must ensure that the device does not have access to corporate email.

A spokesman for the Department of Information Security said: "The Government of Singapore regularly looking for ways to make our network more secure." If you disable the intranet from outside the network, then, of course, the probability of hacking government networks from the outside tends to zero. Officials leave the post of the working nature of the letter mail services from the private accounts. There will also be installed dedicated internet terminals for those officials who need the internet for work.

Singapore went on a truly radical step for the sake of national security. Even banks, casino, mobile operators, where strict rules of work with computers, rarely completely cut off the Internet. However, some banks to work with the internet can only select employees, mainly the analysts, "salespeople" and representatives of the communications department. But the scale of the whole country for the first time such measures are taken.

According to Aloysius Chang (Aloysius Cheang), representative of the Cloud Security Alliance, the Singapore government has decided to return to the practice of working with the Internet, which has existed in the 90's of last century. It was then that officials were working with the Internet via dedicated terminals.

"In the past, almost malevolent software was not able to get to work computers and steal important information," - he says. "Now it is difficult to control leakage (information, Ed.). Social resources or file-sharing sites", - complains Cheng. Recently, leakage of important information in the public network of frequent, the main diversion channel - e-mail.

How off will be made across the country, it is unclear, as the Internet is in Singapore, part of many business processes. Nevertheless, some have made off - check the initiators of the project, as the officials will work with local resources and internet terminals in the absence of a common connection to the Internet.

The statement about the imminent disabling Internet in public organizations appeared quite unexpectedly. After all, Singapore - one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. Here, in particular, launched Smart Nation project, which aims to make Singapore the first "smart" state in the world. However, some experts believe that this project is also a great way to enter the global surveillance of its citizens by the Singapore authorities.

Recently on the Internet disconnected another state - Iraq. The government planned to solve the problem of cheating on the exam from the web. As a result, a few hours a day, cut off the Internet in the country (just at the time of examination). However, here we are talking about the complete network outages across the country, and not just about blocking access to the Internet for the officials.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/277044/