We are familiar with the 'big boys' on the compliance block: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB), and Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)...but if you work in the defense sector, there is a 'new kid on the block'—the Department of Defense (DoD) Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process (DIACAP). What is DIACAP? Why do I need a new paradigm in DoD compliance policies? What does it mean to me?

DIACAP is the next generation of the Certification and Accreditation (C&A) policies within the United States DoD. The history and evolution of the DoD global mission and IT security public policies in the last 10 years has shaped the defense compliance industry with the creation of a new standard. This article intends to give a brief history and description of the DIACAP standard. We will discuss DITSCAP, DIACAP's predecessor and show the paradigm shift from Information Technology Security to Information Assurance and how DIACAP addresses that shift.

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WiFi Is Open, Free and Vulnerable to Hackers

Here's how Army Lt. Col. Clifton H. Poole, who teaches classes on wireless security at the National Defense University, gets his kicks on I-66:

Several times a month, Poole turns on a laptop computer in his car as he commutes between his Reston home and the university campus at Fort McNair in Southwest Washington. As he drives, a software program records the number of "hot spots," areas where wireless transmitters allow Internet access over the air.

The results, Poole says, scare him.After nearly two years of monitoring the same 23-mile route, Poole has watched the number of hot spots boom, as the technology known as WiFi has become the latest Big Internet Thing. Setting up a home or business wireless network gives people freedom to jump onto the Internet without their computers being tethered to cables.

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