> but firewall all systems to access the central registry only, and widen the firewall after an authorized registration of the system. That way, the admins just

> but firewall all systems to access the central registry only, and widen the firewall after an authorized registration of the system. That way, the admins just have to rack systems with a usb stick with some credentials, and it goes or it doesn't. Someone first has to build this system, and after accounting for all of the red tape and approvals and training and new audits required and tallying up the total man-hours required to implement, your solution that is supposed to be "less hard" might actually be much harder than the previous system. It's pretty easy to come up with a multitude of ideas to fix issues like this, but it's another thing entirely to actually implement them, especially in a big government org like NASA. Obviously their current/previous system isn't working and they need to fix it, but I think you would be surprised at how difficult it is to do something even as simple as the system you've conceptualized. Just to give a small anecdote: I've built asset management systems, and in one case at a major F500 company, one that used USB sticks for something similar to what you're describing. Just getting the approval to purchase the USB sticks and establish a process for properly handling the USB sticks once credentials were put on them was something that, by itself, took months.