I am doing a report for a Tech Class. We have to create a secure server for a goverment facility.

I was wondering what other peoples opnions are,would be the most secure server including it's o/s. This would be very helpful. Thank you.

Security is a pretty abstract concept. Nothing is really 100% secure unless no one ever sees it or uses it.

If you have to write an essay about security, then google search these topics:

public private key encryption
security permissions
users and groups
firewalls
secure sockets layer
IPSec
password attacks
dictionary attacks
trojan
tripwire
sniffer
port scanner
IP Spoofing
secure shell

the list kind of goes on forever and ever but basically theres a healthy mix of topics there to look at.

now, you need to work out what a government facility would be able to do. be protected from the outside? Well, probably not, because anything really secure that like would be protected from the rest of the world and not even given an internet connection. Security policy would be more focussed on internal employees, what groups you put users into and what groups can do. only system admins should be able to perform admin functions.

If I talk about this any more then I will be doing your homework for you, which I can't be assed with. But there's some ideas.

Believe it or not, there are some governments interested in running linux for security and so forth so if you google search on these things I am sure that you will find a story to pad this out with as well.

*BSD and Solaris are more secure by default than Linux so you would have less tweaking to do with those.

Stupid me, I forgot about kerberos!