Where is the Boundary of Your Network?

Sun Microsystems is famous for the saying "The network is the computer". As mentioned previously in this space, the computer is the network. Increasingly, any and every application and communications device has network access of some sort. Consequently, when programming with network variables, the questions looms: Where is the boundary of the network? Where does "local" data begin and "non-network" or "foreign" data end?

This question is taken up in the whitepaper "Disappearance of the Network Boundary," published by the Information Security Forum. The conclusion:

"The network is the size of the Internet: the boundary is the point at which you can start to apply controls."

The less control you or your network administrator have over the variables in question, the further in the "wild" you find yourself gleaning data. You can order the whitepaper on the ISF website. Do note that this is a limited time offer; the link may be removed by the ISF at any time.