The More Things Change

Jun 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Sandra Kay Miller

In contrast to the younger practitioners who dominate the computer, networking and information security industry, Fred Avolio was cutting his teeth on VT100 terminals about the same time Microsoft was creating DOS. He has witnessed the progressive march of technology from a time when only a select few had access to computing power, to the present when networked devices have invaded just about every facet of our daily lives.

Avolio transferred to Maryland in 1979 to work as a programmer for the National Security Agency (nsa.gov) supporting UNIX systems. Since then, he's been around the Beltway with the nation's leading technology companies as well as with garage start-ups.

During the 1980s and into early 1990s at Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), one of the early computing pioneers in the United States, Avolio stepped into the realm of digital security when he was tasked with managing and maintaining one of DEC's Internet gateways. He would later become instrumental in the commercialization of the first corporate firewalls — the DEC SEAL (Secure External Access Link), which resulted in a new industry of electronic security.

With the inception of a new class of networking security products, Avolio moved to Trusted Information Systems (TIS), a computer security research and development company that helped develop security technology for NSA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR). TIS developed the first open source firewall software, the Firewall Toolkit, from which one of the first commercial firewalls — the Gauntlet Firewall — evolved.

Avolio held several positions throughout his tenure at TIS, starting as a principal project leader and working his way up to vice president of technology marketing.

Currently, Avolio works at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (jhuapl.edu) where he is working on a project for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) (faa.gov) as a security advisor to build a surveillance system. “[Surveillance is] not a bad word in the aircraft world. Radar is a surveillance system — tracking airplanes and being able to communicate with them and knowing where they are in the airspace over the United States,” Avolio says.

Despite all the technological advances, he sees digital security today as having changed little over the years. “It's the same old stuff — vulnerability assessments of particular systems and with all the computers and networks that are in place, certification, accreditation — there's really not much new in that whole world.”

But there have been changes. Everything is now faster; there's more connectivity and more potential avenues of attack because so many people now have high-speed Internet access, meaning anyone's PC can end up being a potential system that can be broken into and used in a botnet. “It's new technologies, systems being deployed, new networks needing to be protected, but it's protecting them against the same old kinds of vulnerabilities — buffer overflows, bad passwords, text sent in the clear, etc.,” Avolio says. “Our users are doing more things, there are more services, everything is on a network, if not the Internet, and we want to make use of this connected technology in this connected world.”

Despite years of living and doing business in a connected world, Avolio doesn't think people have changed when it comes to behaving badly — from politicians sending inappropriate electronic messages to employees and contractors “touching” private data, such as celebrity medical records. “They don't think they're going to get caught,” he says, adding that people just don't think about privacy when it comes to using technology.

For Avolio, information security boils down to the ultimate purpose of the data and that it touches our lives for our betterment and not to our detriment. “I'm most concerned about how the data is used.” He offers the example of using video surveillance to catch motorists breaking the law. “I'm not concerned so much, for example, if I'm speeding and get caught — I'll pay the fine. My main concern would be then if these types of cameras were used to track law-abiding citizens and not just speeders,” he says.

In addition to watching how technology has affected his career over the last 30 years, Avolio has also witnessed the changes within his own family. He and his wife, Lisa, have nine children ranging in ages from eight to 27. “My son is sitting here with a handheld game while reading something on the Internet. The kids connect their devices wirelessly and play against each other on the Internet. But they're not all just playing games anymore. They're doing homework, they're communicating with computers, they're using them as tools. Today, kids just expect everything to be networked — inside and outside of the house,” he says.

While Avolio's career has focused on TCP/IP connections, he also enjoys connecting with people on a more personal level. “The people that I work with are terrific, but I like connecting with people who aren't my co-workers, employees, partners and sponsors. I like hanging out at a coffee shop and hearing what's going on with people, sharing happy things, bad things, helping to carry their burdens, that kind of stuff.”

Similar to his view on the state of information security — that not much has changed — he sees the same trend throughout society in general. “Whether it's in the workplace or their private lives, people are still looking for significance and happiness. The economy isn't helping and it's downright scary for some people, but I've gone from big companies to little companies and back to a big company again, and the challenges are the same. We still have the same foibles and the same greatness and that's comforting,” he says.

Recently, Avolio read Jefferson's War: America's First War on Terror 1801-1805 (by Joseph Wheelan). In keeping with his belief that little has changed, the book chronicles how the Muslim terrorists of the Barbaray Coast of Africa attacked American ships, which resulted in the United States responding with the use of commandos, native troops, encrypted intelligence and foreign bases under short-term alliances — all unconventional means at that time. What Avolio found most interesting was the amount of time that it took for communications to get from one place to another. “Communicating back to Washington took time, but life, commerce and recognition from other countries went on even in a world that was so slow to communicate. I think that's something we should remember. We're so used to being able to communicate in real-time,” he says.

Avolio frequently takes advantage of modern communication with a friend in Odessa, Ukraine, with whom he regularly chats via video. “He's got a broadband connection and so do I. We see each other face-to-face. In 1806, it took a lot longer, but it did work. I don't want to go back to that, but if the Internet went away for a day, a week, a month or longer, we'd find other ways. We'd just have more time.”

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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