Justice Department will centrally monitor its systems for intrusions
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A system that the Justice Department used to monitor some of its critical systems during the year 2000 rollover has a new job: watching for attacks on department systems and Web sites.
By Shruti Dat'
GCN Staff
A system that the Justice Department used to monitor some of its critical systems during the year 2000 rollover has a new job: watching for attacks on department systems and Web sites.
The Justice Intrusion Detection System gives department officials a central way to monitor activities on systems across Justice.
The recent rash of attacks on private-sector Web sites and ongoing threats to government systems have made Justice constantly vigilant, said Linda Burek, deputy chief information officer in the Justice Management Division.
'Everyone on the planet is cognizant of the security concerns now,' she said. 'But we use a variety of intrusion detection systems to funnel information into a central network, which is unique to us.'
JIDS, which Justice deployed in December to monitor its Justice Consolidated Network during the year 2000 rollover, pulls together data gathered by multiple intrusion detection systems.
DynCorp of Reston, Va., in July received a contract to develop JIDS as a proof-of-concept application. The company's information and enterprise technology group used Open e-Security Platform Version 1.1 and Administrator Workbench Version 1.1'integration programs from e-Security Inc. of Naples, Fla.'to link five disparate intrusion detection systems used by the department.
The e-Security app converges the input from the five systems into one monitoring console program within JCN. JCN has a graphical user interface that maps suspect activity, creates security alerts and notes the severity of intrusions. The intrusion information is also posted to an access-controlled Web page.
Burek said Justice aims to expand JIDS beyond the five nodes by adding links to other systems in the department. She said Justice bureaus would be responsible for installing intrusion detection systems so the department could conduct central monitoring via JIDS.
She said some bureaus have already installed intrusion detection systems but the department still must integrate the reporting information into JIDS.
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