Enter the resurrection of the TOS (trusted operating system), a relic from the early '80s developed for military and government security. Considered by many to be too expensive and complicated to implement and maintain, TOSes failed to catch on when introduced . . .
Enter the resurrection of the TOS (trusted operating system), a relic from the early '80s developed for military and government security. Considered by many to be too expensive and complicated to implement and maintain, TOSes failed to catch on when introduced to the commercial sector and instead were pigeonholed into the financial industry. With today's corporate Web servers serving as the gateway to mission- critical e-business applications and information, however, IT departments should take a hard look at the new generation of TOSes. View illustration, "Compartmentalization is the key."

A TOS is simply a security-hardened version of a standard OS. TOSes come in a variety of flavors, including Sun Solaris, Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX, IBM AIX, Linux, and Microsoft Windows NT. Trusted versions of these operating systems isolate key OS functions into separate compartments, limiting the ability of intruders to access and control critical parts of a computer system, as well as preventing administrators from making inadvertent, harmful changes.

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