in goods and $212,000 in services, including a $13,000 Hewlett-Packard
minicomputer. He received a $1,000 fine and two and one-half years’
probation, with fifteen hours a week community service.
Far from being 100-percent antiestablishment, however, Zap is a
Philadelphia Republican fond of wing tips. (“They show good
breeding.”) And a computer security consultant, a client, praises him
as “a damn good technician.” A computer-crime expert named Jay
BloomBecker isn’t so keen on the use of e×-criminals in security:
“There are a lot of people just as bright who have stayed within the
law.” Regardless, Zap has some good tips for security-minded computer
users, especially those with dial-up machines. Among them:
▪ _Don’t think of computers as gods._ “Remember, there’s just another
human at the other end.”
▪ _Spread out your computer numbers; you might even use different
telephone exchanges._ Don’t have numbers adjacent to each other—like
555-1212 next to 555-1213. If you do, your computers will be easier
targets for hackers with _WarGames_-style dialing programs that scan
local exchanges for computer numbers.
That’s good advice from Zap. In the same vein, even if you have just
one micro, you might consider trying to get a phone number in an
exchange miles from your actual location. You might even want to use a
tie line to another city. It all depends on whether you think the
costs would justify the added protection; for many businesses they
wouldn’t.
Also, you might keep your modem number secret from people who don’t
need to know. A Hollywood director, fearful that computer-smart
science-fiction fans might tap into his dial-up machine, used such a
precaution. Only he and his regular callers knew the number. His
super-secretive approach obviously wouldn’t have worked in a typical
business, especially one with many phone lines coming in. Also,
nothing’s foolproof; suppose an electronic snoop unlocks your
building’s wire closet.
▪ _If possible, use modems faster than 1,200 baud._ Then, says Zap,
“most hackers’ modems can’t keep up.” Most small computers’ modems
transmit at 300 baud, about 300 letters or numbers a second.
▪ _Remember that hackers can be ingenious._ “Don’t be smug just
because you have a dial-back modem. That’s a device that makes
callers tap out a special code, and then it rings them back at their
authorized location. You can get around it by tying into the central
office and setting up a three-way call—without anyone hearing you. I
know hackers can set up three-way calls. I’ve done it myself.”
▪ _Protective devices, however, are better than nothing at all._
“Despite their limitations, I’d still install a call-back
arrangement or a device that asked you for a code—or maybe a
combination of the two. A combination usually would be much better.”
▪ _Don’t get hung up on protecting your dial-up computer with just
hardware or just software—use both._ “Black boxes can help keep the
wrong people from breaking in. But you also need good security
software to control _how_ deeply even authorized people can get into
your computer. You want some people—like customers—to have only
_partial_ access to the goodies inside your system.”
▪ _Watch what you throw away._ “Some hackers can log onto your dial-up
computer after first poking through your trash—for printouts with
passwords and similar material.” Another hacker jokingly refers to
“The Dempster Dumpster Library.”
■ ■ ■
Don’t lose track of security threats around your office itself while
worrying about modems and encryption. Would you believe that you can’t
absolutely erase an electronic file—say, a letter or report on your
disk—just by following the directions in your software? A snoop might
recover the information with a special program like Disk Doctor.
Luckily, however, you can zap a sensitive file by magnetically “writing”
over its part of the disk. Say you want to wipe out a letter 500 words
long, File A. Well, do the following:
1. See if your disk has a file at least 500 or 600 words long. If so,
make a copy. If not, type out a file that long. I’ll call this new
file “B.”
2. “Write” File B’s contents under A’s name. “Overwrite” in other words.
3. Erase A.
To _really_ erase an entire disk? Well, don’t depend on your computer’s
“copy” program or “format” program. Instead, just sweep a magnet over
it—within a quarter inch or so.[57]
Footnote 57:
My thanks to J. Michael Nye, for calling my attention to the problems
of incomplete erasures. Ed Bigelow, of Adevco, a Pennsylvania company
selling networks to link computers in the same office, also was
helpful.
So much for the James Bond kind of data security. Now on to coffee
spilled on floppy disks.
Whether it’s coffee or Coke, unless you’re careful, you’re possibly
going to be your own biggest data-security threat. Just ask people like
Betty Cappucci, a quality-control manager with the Dennison Kybe
Corporation in Kopkinton, Massachusetts. “Most of the time,” she says of
returned disks, “it isn’t the disk—it’s spit or fingerprints. All you
have to do is look at offices with people eating their lunch near their
computers.”
“We see disks coming back with cigarette ashes and coffee stains,” said
Jack Fitzgerald, who at the time was a field engineer with another disk
maker.
And it isn’t just the very smallest computer users who abuse their
disks. “The big problem in computer facilities,” he says, “often is
cleanliness. I’ve been to a large investment firm in New York City and
seen apple cores on the floor, Big Mac containers near the disks. And
yet they were complaining of data-loss problems.
“This was a major investment firm with all sorts of ads on news programs
and football games about how carefully they protected your money,” says
Fitzgerald. “No investor lost money in this case because the firm at
least had backup disks. But the company itself lost thousands of dollars
of processing time—money they could have spent helping their investors
earn more.”
A programmer with a Florida accounting firm, however, didn’t even have a
backup when his disk crashed on a large computer.
“He was actually crying on the phone,” Fitzgerald recalls. “He had lost
two disks. And he was willing to pay $20,000 to get data off them. His
job was on the line.
“I’ve had disk crashes myself,” Fitzgerald says, discussing his
off-hours work on his micro. “I was developing a small game similar to
Space Invaders. I lost power on my computer and about three hours of
work. I ignored one of my basic rules, which is to back up about every
20 lines—make a copy on a second disk.” Captain Zap’s rule is, “Every
fifteen minutes, save on both disks.” That’s extreme. Like all forms of
security, apply this in relation to the trouble it would take to recover
a loss.
Even Paul Lutus, famous in the industry for his work developing Apple
software, has a scary crash story.[58]
Footnote 58:
The Lutus story is from _Popular Computing_.
He’d toiled to develop a new program, of which he took two copies to the
company. An electronic glitch cost him one of the copies. The sun melted
the other. It seems that Steve Jobs, an Apple cofounder, had put the
disk under the windshield of his car. “I ended up very carefully prying
apart the case of Jobs’s copy and switching the floppy disk inside to
another case so we could recover the programs,” Lutus says. “I haven’t
always been so lucky.... For me the biggest drawback to personal
computing is the quality of the mass storage. I dislike floppy disks
intensely.”
Here’s how you can help your floppies and data survive threats more
immediate—sloppiness and stupidity:
1. Zealously enforce a no-drinking, no-eating policy around disks, at
least if trouble develops.
2. Remember the Rothman Dirt Domino Theory. Dirt, dust, and grease often
can sneak up on your floppies indirectly, in stages. You start with
clean hands. Then, however, they fall domino style when you touch a
dirty table or one with your office mate’s submarine-sandwich
drippings. You return to your own desk briefly before you yourself
leave for lunch. You don’t work with floppies then, and you wash your
hands after eating, but during your brief stop at your desk before
lunch, you’ve already left a trace of grease behind, anyway. Your disk
box picks it up when you set it on the wrong spot on the desk. Then,
working with the floppies, you lay one atop the box. Now the disk
itself fails. Alas, most disk failures aren’t gradual like a recording
that gets progressively noisier until you can’t stand to listen to it
anymore—they tend to be sudden and total.
3. Realize that floppies don’t always mix well with office materials
that correct errors the old-fashioned way—erasers, for instance,
white-out fluid, or that unavoidably flaky correction tape.
4. Know about other natural enemies of floppies or at least of the data
on them. Beware of airport metal detectors. A disk maker says this
isn’t a problem; but don’t gamble, since a magnetic detector,
misadjusted, might still mush your data. Beware, too, of telephones
atop disks: the magnets in them are powerful.
5. Don’t even let your floppies rest against your computer’s screen,
which, like a television’s, can be full of static electricity,
attracting dust.
6. Remember that the more information you can pack on a floppy, the more
vulnerable it may be to damage from dirt, fingerprints, magnetic
fields, and other causes.
7. Clean your disk heads. Don’t use rubbing alcohol. “Try something like
a Freon-based material with 91 percent pure alcohol,” Fitzgerald says.
“You can get it at some computer stores.” Or, after every twenty hours
of operation, use a cleaning diskette, three of which typically come
in a $15 package. Each disk, says Fitzgerald, will last about thirty
cleanings.
8. Have head alignment checked, to reduce disk errors. With heads out of
whack, your machine may be the only one that can read your disks—not
even identical machines. A crude way of assuring proper alignments, in
fact, might be to see if other machines can read disks written on your
micro.
9. Buy quality disks. Of course, the more you spend on disks, the more
expensive your backups become—discouraging you from making them. Find
a balance between cost and convenience that suits your security needs.
Timing—that’s the secret to saving your electronic diamonds or
rhinestones on your floppies, whatever the quality.
In the past, working just with paper, timing meant to me nothing more
than the Rothman Chronological Method. The newer the document on my
desk, the closer it would be to the top of the file. It wasn’t the most
efficient way. But I rarely lost material, just temporarily misplaced
it. Computerizing, however, I worried.
“Floppies are treacherous,” my friend Michael Canyes said like a John
Bircher discussing commies. “They always trick you when you least expect
it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “The way you’re encouraging me to computerize, I’m
beginning to think you actually want to sabotage me. Help me lose my
manuscripts and all that.”
“Just back up your copy page or so,” Michael said.
“Isn’t that a lot of trouble?”
“Maybe twenty seconds. Then you’re protected if the power fails. Or
maybe your computer. You can’t afford to have your material stored just
in on your chip. It’s just temporary. You cut off the current a fraction
of a second, it’ll forget everything. You’ve got to get your stuff on
the disk ASAP.”
All right, I supposed my creative juices wouldn’t dry up during the half
minute the disk drive was whirring.
“The ‘Save’ command on WordStar is =KS=,” Michael said. “Just hold down
the ‘Control’ button on your computer while you’re doing that. Then
you’ll hear a whir and the disk drive clicking away.” Somehow my Kaypro
was coming across as an animal to be fed during training; the clicking
could be the sound of a dog chomping up candied biscuits after a
successful lesson.
“You’re also going to make backup disks,” Michael said. “Sort of like
electronic carbon paper.”
“I don’t have time,” I said.
“You’ll find time. You can do it in just a minute or so. You can even
use a scratch disk to be safe.”
“What’s a scratch disk?”
“Suppose the power failed or something went wrong with your machine
while you were making your copy,” Michael said. “Then you could be up
the creek without a paddle. You might lose both the original and the
copy.”
“So?”
“That’s why you have a scratch disk. You copy on it first. If something
goes haywire, then you’re still safe. Because, during your last work
session, you made a backup.”
“Theoretically,” I said.
“And if something goes wrong while you’re recording on your permanent
backup disk, then you can just work from the scratch disk. It’s just
what it sounds, sort of a scratch pad.”
“Oh, I’ll use paper, thank you,” I persisted. “The best backup yet.
It’ll be years before it falls apart. And who knows? Maybe by then the
Library of Congress will be preserving my manuscripts.”
Michael withheld a guffaw.
“Well, I can type a mean streak on my Selectric,” I said. “I can get my
stuff back into the computer in no time.”
Always the patient teacher, Michael didn’t argue.
Presumably, however, another writer nowadays would have agreed with
Michael immediately. His editors had been looking forward to having the
printer set type from the disk he’d submit with the paper version of his
manuscript—a crowded floppy storing every single byte from his toil.
Then the editors could bring the book out six or eight weeks faster,
with the disk in the printer’s hands. But in this unlucky man’s case the
disk never reached the printer’s hungry computer—he hadn’t, alas, made
an electronic copy. A case of hubris if ever there was one.
You might avoid such traumas by following the Rothman Chronological
Method II (RCM II), a lazy man’s form of data security for those with
fast printers:
1. Every five minutes or so, type out the “KS” or an equivalent and dump
your work of the moment into the disk—for, ideally, permanent
preservation.
2. Every half an hour make a printout of your recent work. With a fast
printer, that’ll still be faster than messing around with an
electronic copy at this point. Remember, you still have the backup
disk from your last work session. So even if the original fails,
you’ll need to reenter just the newest material.
3. Every day make your backup floppy. You might forget about the scratch
disk and make two copies.
What about working with hard disks? Well, Winchesters are more
dependable than floppies. On the other hand, they commonly store many
times more material than do the soft disks—meaning perhaps a fiftyfold
increase in your agony if one fails.
“Always try to use an uninterruptible power supply with your
Winchester,” warns Fitzgerald, whose former company produces hard disks
as well as floppies. Some manufacturers say their hard disks don’t need
this protection. But, in general, it’s a good idea; here’s why.
Normally, the head picking up the magnetic patterns is only ten or
twenty thousandths of an inch from the oxide-coated disk. The disk is
aluminum—and shear-prone in the event of a crash. Instead of the typical
soft whirl, you’ll hear an ear-piercing squeal like a car brake out of
adjustment, except that the aftermath will be more costly. Repairs may
run into the hundreds of dollars, not to mention the loss of data.
Not every power failure will produce a disk crash. But why gamble with
your Winchester and its data?
An uninterruptible power supply will protect them by pumping out juice
long enough for you to know something is amiss and shut the disk down.
It sells for several hundred dollars, commonly, and is normally worth
it.
“Also,” says Fitzgerald, “be sure the drive is grounded and shielded as
the manufacturer recommends. If not, power surges could cause it to lose
track of its data.”
He suggests one more precaution. Since the disk and the head are so
close, why not warn furniture bangers? This could change. Hard disks are
shock mounted in some portables nowadays, so that the equipment isn’t
quite _that_ delicate. But I’d still try not to be too klutzy around
it—and to be careful in other respects.
You can back up a Winchester in one of several ways:
1. Dumping to floppies. It’s cheap but slow. Then again, you can speed
up the process by updating only the files you’ve been working on. You
just “write” over them.
2. Transferring the Winchester’s contents to a special tape drive large
enough to hold them. This method is fast but may cost you a good
$1,500.
3. Dumping to an ordinary videocassette recorder. Although slow, it’s
okay up to around 100 megabytes or so, and you can set the VCR timer
to “watch television” off the Winchester at night when you’re not
using it.
“Interesting,” you say, “but how about the lap-sized portable I’m
considering? How do I protect the information inside that?” The best
way, of course, is not to lose the memory and the rest of the portable;
as a well-practiced raincoat forgetter, I’ll never be the ideal owner of
a lap-sized portable.
Common sense, too, suggests that you not store a lap-size portable
inside a car with the sun blazing down—bad news for heat-sensitive chips
and other parts.
If your portable uses a =bubble memory=, your data-security problems are
milder in some respects than with other kinds. The bubbles are tiny
magnetized areas inside a small metal container. Magnetized “north,” a
bubble might mean a bit specifying “one.” Magnetized “south,” it could
mean zero. (You’ll recall that bits form a byte standing for a letter or
number.) Magnetic bubble memories aren’t that much faster than disks,
but they _keep_ remembering forever—unlike the CMOS (Complementary Metal
Oxide Semiconductor) RAMs used in many portables.
An RAM will develop amnesia if your power fails, and a CMOS RAM is no
different. It’s just that the CMOS keeps the power requirements extralow
so small batteries can dribble out the needed juice after you’ve
“officially” switched your machine off. This “hibernation” may last
weeks or months. (Check your instruction manual.) You’re in great shape,
however, only as long as your batteries are; the Eveready commercials
may talk of nine lives, but your data may have only one. Someday your
care may count more than ever. Low-cost CMOS RAMs may eventually store
thousands of pages on one chip; and power failure might not be the only
risk.
Imagine. You can tap out a chapter of your 1,000-page great American
novel some bitter winter night, lazing on the rug by your fireplace.
Your lover is stroking your back and—ZAP! Since CMOS RAMs are such
low-voltages devices, think what thousands of volts from static can do.
Here’s one solution to the portables’ static problems. Before computing,
you might discharge yourself on a nearby vent or anything else that’s
grounded. You can also spray your home and office rugs with Static Guard
or its equivalent. And you also can use a static mat—cheap at your local
computer store—if the zaps persist.
What about a plane thirty thousand feet up? Then you might try
discharging yourself against a metal ashtray before using your portable.
If it’s all plastic, with no metal parts, by the way, your risks are
much less than otherwise. But they’re still there.
Whatever style portable you’re using, remember the importance of
backups—however inconvenient or costly. Through a cable called a =null
modem=, you can pipe valuable reports from your portable to a larger
computer a few feet away. You may want to do this, anyhow. Your
lap-sized computer simply may run out of storage room much more quickly
than a bigger machine and may lack floppy disks to spread those bits and
bytes around. So make sure your portable software lets you zip material
back and forth between machines.
“And in the field? What backup technique, then?”
Well, you’re often stuck with slow, tape-style storage. And mini-disk
drives may be expensive and take up room if they’re not already in your
portable.
But why not see if your company will let you send valuable reports over
the phone for temporary storage in its big computer? You can also stash
them away inside a desktop computer hooked up to the portable the same
way. And there’s yet another answer. Rent electronic storage space on a
commercial computer network like The Source of CompuServe.
In the future, maybe computer memories—on little portables and desktops
alike—won’t be so temperamental. Perhaps there will be superreliable
CMOS RAMs. Or how about practical, low-cost disks that you use lasers to
“read” and “write” on? Dreams, dreams!
Meanwhile, most of us struggle along with floppies and must keep
thinking, Backup! Handle carefully! Clean! Maintain! and How often? In
summary, keep asking yourself:
1. How much time or money does it take to enter your data or set up your
computer equipment?
2. How easily could you duplicate or replace it?
3. How much time or money do you have for copying, cleaning,
maintenance, whatever precaution you’re taking?
Do keep data security in perspective. Remember, even if you must be a
zealot at times, it’s just part of surviving with your computer. Harold
Joseph Highland, a data-security stalwart in his work—a believer in two
backup disks of book manuscripts—tells of people who make out very well
with far less copying. They are students at the University of Minnesota,
computer-science majors, and they trudge through snow and ice carrying
unbacked-up floppies in their books. Their professors are tolerant. If a
disk fails and a student’s assignment is late, they understand. The
students can’t afford too many floppies, and some just don’t have the
time for backups. It’s the same, perhaps, at countless other colleges,
and maybe that’s only right for twenty-year-olds who’ll learn soon
enough about disappointments beyond the campus.
But you’re in business, perhaps, without a friendly professor ready with
a sympathetic nod. Your making regular backups is just plain good sense,
and if you don’t, you deserve what’s coming to you.
Isn’t that what data security should be about?
It needn’t be Orwellian at all. If anything, in fact, Winston Smith had
more of a data-security problem than Big Brother. Privacy, certainly, is
an important data-security element, as is what the jargonists call
=integrity=—accuracy and completeness of files. Think of Winston Smith
and his appreciation of history and Big Brother’s propensity for
tampering with the contents of back issues of the _London Times_! Even
if “1984” has already become a year, the number, to true believers in
data security, remains a warning.
This will be especially true as more and more machines swap secrets over
the wires between home and office.
11 ❑ Wired to Work
John Fuller’s daughter is grown now, and he’s taken over her room,
cluttering it with computer and boating magazines and his Heathkit
micro. At first glance it looks like the computer room of any of
thousands of hobbyists. You may, in fact, catch whiffs of smoke from
Fuller’s soldering gun.
It’s an unlikely setting for a working office of the U.S. Navy.
And yet that’s exactly what it was when Lieutenant Commander Fuller
responded to my notice on an electronic bulletin board asking if anyone
at home was hooked up to his boss via computers.
“I’ve been getting away with it for six months,” Fuller drawled proudly.
On the verge of retirement from the navy, he was determined to
telecommute in civilian life, too, perhaps as a management consultant,
his military job. “It seems foolish for me to get in a car to go to an
office,” he said, “if I can go to that office by phone. I’m much happier
not having to get into traffic for forty-five minutes each morning. I
can have coffee and read the _Washington Post_, and I’m not tense. I
work fewer hours. But I don’t have five or six guys to talk to about
ball scores, either. The government’s getting a better deal from me
working at home.”
In fact, Electronic Services Unlimited (ESU), a research firm in New
York City, found typical productivity increases between 15 and 20
percent.