Darling is to make an announcement at 3.30 - bit of a problem?

[DimPrawn]

Rather unbelievably I worked on the system that was meant to replace the current Child Benefit system, but it got canned about a year into the project due to technical challenges that proved to difficult to resolve. I'm sure they regret not continuing a bit now.. This system would have had an interface with Audit over a secure connection, just like another system has, for which I personally tested this very interface. I know exactly what the records would have looked like, indeed just comma-separated records for every event worth auditing. Newsnight on now, should be interesting indeed..

Maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but they want to securely transfer data from one place to another and they think the solution is to post some disks.

Could they not use a VPN to send the file or secure FTP (FTP over SSL) using an ultrafast link?

It's not rocket science surely....

[XperTest]

Maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but they want to securely transfer data from one place to another and they think the solution is to post some disks.

Could they not use a VPN to send the file or secure FTP (FTP over SSL) using an ultrafast link?

It's not rocket science surely....

The old Child Benefit system must be something like 20 years old. I don't believe it supports this sort of connectivity..

[TheFaQQer]

Maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but they want to securely transfer data from one place to another and they think the solution is to post some disks.

Could they not use a VPN to send the file or secure FTP (FTP over SSL) using an ultrafast link?

It's not rocket science surely....

You are overcomplicating it. They want to transfer data - they clearly don't give a stuff about it being secure, or it would have been encrypted.

But it is password protected, so that should take a while to get past

[DimPrawn]

The old Child Benefit system must be something like 20 years old. I don't believe it supports this sort of connectivity..

Doesn't need connectivity.

It must write out files to a disk.

Takes said files from disk and send over SSL secured link to a disk at the other end.

How's is that different from posting a disk? (Except it actually gets there and no-one can steal it).

[XperTest]

Doesn't need connectivity.

It must write out files to a disk.

Takes said files from disk and send over SSL secured link to a disk at the other end.

How's is that different from posting a disk? (Except it actually gets there and no-one can steal it).

Good point. No idea how they operate the old system and if this was a routine thing to do. In the new system the system itself would keep track of audit events and these would be sent over a secure connection to NAO by a daily (nightly) batch job..

[TheFaQQer]

Doesn't need connectivity.

It must write out files to a disk.

Takes said files from disk and send over SSL secured link to a disk at the other end.

How's is that different from posting a disk? (Except it actually gets there and no-one can steal it).

Given the joined-up thinking, I think the plan was:

- extract the data to disk
- Not encrypt it, as that might make it hard to read
- Take it in person to another office
- Pay loads of temps / civil servants to manually type in all the data again.

Data migration 101.

[DimPrawn]

Given the joined-up thinking, I think the plan was:

- extract the data to disk
- Not encrypt it, as that might make it hard to read
- Take it in person to another office
- Pay loads of temps / civil servants to manually type in all the data again.

Data migration 101.

For £100K (or a weeks pay at EDS rates) I'd sort out a file copy routine for them.

[threaded]

Rather unbelievably I worked on the system that was meant to replace the current Child Benefit system, but it got canned about a year into the project due to technical challenges that proved to difficult to resolve. I'm sure they regret not continuing a bit now.. This system would have had an interface with Audit over a secure connection, just like another system has, for which I personally tested this very interface. I know exactly what the records would have looked like, indeed just comma-separated records for every event worth auditing. Newsnight on now, should be interesting indeed..

Secure connection my bottom, it was a pair of Marconi modems on a BT leased line. The only security was that they were so old that no one else made stuff that used those tones any more. Yeah and slow too, OK for a dumb terminal, but just try sending that amount of data down the line... When this was pointed out they tried to hitchhike on the 'benefit card' project that went to a pair of Jaguar ISDN terminals, encryption was trivially cracked (by someone walking past the office testing it one morning and offered to show them how easy it was).

[Churchill]

Has anybody ascertained why the Audit office need all those details?

If they need the bank details for a particular recipient, they can get them.

Why do they need all of the records?

I'm assuming you lot know that the government can check the balance on all of your UK based accounts - without a warrant...

[DimPrawn]

If we all had ID cards this wouldn't have happened.

They would have lost that data instead.

HTH