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Printable Version: RFC1244.PDF
RFC 1244 Site Security Handbook July 1991
lead to additional confusion and wasted or ineffective effort.
The single point of contact may or may not be the person "in
charge" of the incident. There are two distinct rolls to fill
when deciding who shall be the point of contact and the person in
charge of the incident. The person in charge will make decisions
as to the interpretation of policy applied to the event. The
responsibility for the handling of the event falls onto this
person. In contrast, the point of contact must coordinate the
effort of all the parties involved with handling the event.
The point of contact must be a person with the technical expertise
to successfully coordinate the effort of the system managers and
users involved in monitoring and reacting to the attack. Often
the management structure of a site is such that the administrator
of a set of resources is not a technically competent person with
regard to handling the details of the operations of the computers,
but is ultimately responsible for the use of these resources.
Another important function of the POC is to maintain contact with
law enforcement and other external agencies (such as the CIA, DoD,
U.S. Army, or others) to assure that multi-agency involvement
occurs.
Finally, if legal action in the form of prosecution is involved,
the POC may be able to speak for the site in court. The
alternative is to have multiple witnesses that will be hard to
coordinate in a legal sense, and will weaken any case against the
attackers. A single POC may also be the single person in charge
of evidence collected, which will keep the number of people
accounting for evidence to a minimum. As a rule of thumb, the
more people that touch a potential piece of evidence, the greater
the possibility that it will be inadmissible in court. The
section below (Legal/Investigative) will provide more details for
consideration on this topic.
5.5 Legal/Investigative
5.5.1 Establishing Contacts with Investigative Agencies
It is important to establish contacts with personnel from
investigative agencies such as the FBI and Secret Service as soon
as possible, for several reasons. Local law enforcement and local
security offices or campus police organizations should also be
informed when appropriate. A primary reason is that once a major
attack is in progress, there is little time to call various
personnel in these agencies to determine exactly who the correct
point of contact is. Another reason is that it is important to
Site Security Policy Handbook Working Group [Page 73]