Secret Service Flounders With 1980s Mainframe
A new report shows that the technology used by the United States Secret Service is so old, it's only operational 60 percent of the time.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, says that because of outdated systems and a mainframe that dates back to the 1980s, he's had "concern for a while" about the Secret Service computers. ABC News quotes Lieberman as saying a 60 percent, fully operational average is far worse than "industry and government standards that are around 98 percent generally."
ABC cites sources that say the Secret Service is so plagued by computer-related issues, it invited the National Security Agency to formally review its IT systems. These sources say the Secret Service's databases are outdated and at times, users are unable to conduct searches from one system to another.
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VAX VMS ftw!
where do you even find parts for a 1980s mainframe??
War Games comes to mind lol.
where do you even find parts for a 1980s mainframe??War Games comes to mind lol.
Joshua - Would you like to play a game?
I'm pretty sure the annual budget for the Secret Service is classified but, my guess is they have had all the money they have requested for at least the last 10 years....what is the hold up?
"...the Secret Service is so plagued by computer-related issues, it invited the National Security Agency to formally review its IT systems." - - Costing taxpayers millions, no doubt - instead of hiring a handful of college students in their last last year of schooling who would do a comprehensive assessment probably for free just for the chance to be able to put the experience on their resumes. You absolutely got to love bureaucracy and the way governments operate. As for the story itself, I'm sure these people are less relevant today than before, I mean clearly if they can actually function with outdated technology, it just goes to show that they are not really at the forefront of anything.
It's rather strange that the government generally strives for 98% uptime... In our IT group, we have big penalties if we don't hit 99.90% Having 98% uptime means they are grateful to have their system offline for nearly 30 minutes on average every day. Yikes.
It may be harder to hack into 1980 mainframes since our youngest and brightest don't even know what EBCDIC is.
Don't worry, our messiah know how to use a Blackberry. He covenanted with us that he will revamp the country's IT system.
It may be harder to hack into 1980 mainframes since our youngest and brightest don't even know what EBCDIC is.
Pfff.... a simple DDOS or a DOS will work easily.
Ya, pretty bad when your Black berries and Smart phones have more computing power then their main frames.
Don't worry, our messiah know how to use a Blackberry. He covenanted with us that he will revamp the country's IT system.
I would rather have the messiah than an ex-cokehead.
We aim for 99.99999% uptime at my company. Lazy government employees.....
Oops, added two extra nines, it's only 99.999% uptime, man, we have it easy!
I have to deal with the data output from these "ancient" (read that as "should be extinct") monstrosities converting it to something that a modern computer can use because they would rather pay for my services than spend the dollars to update their systems.
I shudder to think at the waste of taxpayer dollars keeping that monstrosity running at all and the cost of the power that it uses in the process.
And they wonder why we think our government is broken....
"Would you like to play a game. How about a nice game of chess?"
Probably the only thing it can do anymore.
hey...at least they upgraded from those punchcards..
I call BS. The Secret Service is a branch of the Treasury. They are -not- underfunded. This is a smoke and mirrors excuse for more money to be funneled into another "department" of the government that we wouldn't approve of.
I call BS. The Secret Service is a branch of the Treasury. They are -not- underfunded. This is a smoke and mirrors excuse for more money to be funneled into another "department" of the government that we wouldn't approve of.
there may be a good reason
every time an upgrade is done (esp hardware) there's a risk of sabotage or spy devices being introduced
I could probably cobble together a better system with parts from the goodwill and Linux. I'm just saying.
HAL 9000...."I can't let you do that Dave"
I would rather have the messiah than an ex-cokehead.
So, is Obama the 'messiah' AND the 'ex-cokehead'? You do know that he admitted to smoking weed and snorting coke, right?
and you're paying for them to be lazy....what a job!
There's got to be more to this story.
Wow so they have the same or less computing power than a Iphone.
Maybe a nettop with moblin, atom based pc for $180 can replace their mainframe.
Might still be stuck with the lack of internet infrastructure that the Iphone has "3G" or USA national over avg. internet equivalent of 3MB/s .
And I complain about my slow quad 4850 Ati stream MPI 8 vpc clusters with the intel I7c-920 memory controller.
I take my hat of for those brave souls.
where do you even find parts for a 1980s mainframe.
Give HP/EDS a ring, bound to have a few boxes of spares lying around for a few million $$$.
Kicking it old school!
I would rather have the messiah than an ex-cokehead.
Wow. Obama IS an ex-cokehead, and admitted it openly. But to the point: Obama wasn't running against Bush, no matter what you may have heard.
Yeah... instead there would be a dead from the neck up run-away from work ex-gov. of Alaska that is a heartbeat away from the red button.
Geeze 1980 computers? Security through obscurity does WORK somewhat. I *FORGOT* how to my 1980s computers.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Gibson yet.
"...Costing taxpayers millions, no doubt - instead of hiring a handful of college students in their last last year of schooling who would do a comprehensive assessment
what an idiot
you actually think a bunch of seniors from MIT or Yale could as comprehensive an assessment as people from the NSA with years of experience ?
hell, why not just get a senior in med school to preform that open heart surgery you need ? I'm sure they'd be happy for the experience. Why pay all that money for a board certified surgeon ?
moron.