At 09:00 PM 12/5/95 -0500, Pete Loshin <pete@loshin.com> wrote:
The point is, if you want to keep your organization's systems secure, you need some mechanism to do so. Security clearance is one way; banks and other financial institutions do other things (like finger prints, background checks, etc.) ... My big question is, do any of the companies providing Internet services, or Internet software, or digital commerce services/software, employ any of these security mechanisms on their employees?
Few, if any, other than companies already in the military business; secret clearances are _expensive_, usually take a long time to get, and the military only gives them to people who need them. Normally, to get clearances for your employees, you need to have a security bureaucracy to also get clearance for handling classified material in your building, though perhaps they'd make other arrangements so the cleared escrow agent could take the master keys down to the local FBI office to unlock somebody's correspondence. Commercial companies are more likely to use bonding services to insure themselves against employee theft, though they also do things like talking to previous employers, and for sensitive positions some companies check criminal records. Many companies will run a TRW-or-equivalent credit check on applicants to see if there are major outstanding problems (though somehow the Mafia seldom reports bad gambling debts to TRW :-), and some companies pretend they're doing drug tests to check for people with expensive habits. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # Anybody notice that Microsoft's Wide Open Road ad has barbed-wire fences # on both sides of the road?