By Andrew R. Hickey

"Oh lord!"

Those were the first words out of Ned Allison's mouth one recent afternoon when by chance he spotted a crasher trying to hop onto his network. The exclamation could've been a lot more colorful, but thankfully for Allison, he was on it. He had it under control.

At the time, Allison, vice president of the Sacramento chapter of the Information Systems Security Association, was working as a network and security expert at a high-profile California state agency. He won't name the agency, but he said it's a government agency with a network containing critical state data. Allison is also a Certified Information Systems Security Professional, the premier vendor-agnostic information security certification.

The agency had made a request to bring wireless scanners into the warehouse. Since the warehouse is on a major thoroughfare with a lot of wireless activity, however, some deemed the barcode readers a security risk because the information they transferred would contain financial data. But as Allison is quick to point out: "Security is meant to enable business, not disable it." So he forged on.

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