[log in to unmask],Net wrote at 22:13 on 08/11/98 
about "RE: firewall exclusions for general practices":
-----------------------------
>Why do we need a firewall between us and NHSnet for gods sake??
I refer you to the answers given previously on GP-UK.  

>The point about NHSnet connection is surely that it is secure and
isolated. An isolated enclosure of only 1 000 000 people.  Good.

>It allows access to the outside but not the other way
>round. 
THere needs to be access to the practice/pcg websites from outside, 
so we can do extranet to our patients - the most important trading 
partners of the NHS.  I havn't seen the details of the new look NHS 
Net as an ISP yet, but I will be looking for DMZ webspace...

>I would never work in the NHS
>again. The code of connection makes me legally liable,
Do you think the NHS Net tracking is going to be watertight?

>The firewall only prevents ingress and attack, it does little else
other than
>monitor. 
I think it is supposed to allow us to expose some information, for 
people who need it, while restricting some other infomration to 
other people who need it, and restricting other information to 
people who are agreed to have a right to it...within the practice 
itself.

It isn't really a virus thing, it is against information piracy, and 
really the NHS Net is too large to expect there not to be people 
getting onto it who don't understand, or who are malign.  Therefore 
we need to protect ourself against NHS Net.  Basically read NHS Net 
everywhere you have read Internet WRT security.

Now it is entirely possible that the NHS can put together an ISP 
that is as good and no more expensive to us and safer for our 
patients than the ISPs we pay our tenner a month to, but unless it 
actually takes over all of the above's functions, educational use by 
doctors' children included, there is as yet no reason for GPs to buy 
it.

Some of us still have hopes of a daring and visionary bit of 
management getting this done, and would applaud it massively and 
write recommendations for Honours... others have said "sod this, buy 
what comes in a box and comes tomorrow".

PCGs cannot wait for the impulses to travel up and down the dinosaur 
a few more times, and the debacles with X400 gateways and such like 
do nothing to breed confidence.
--- OffRoad 1.9r registered to Adrian Midgley



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