HASCS is working on establishing akerberos-authentication scheme on the studentnetwork for next fall.

Right now, passwords travel unencoded acrossthe wires, and any knowledgeable user can view thenon-encrypted password. Kerberos would guaranteethat the passwords traveling over the network werescrambled.

Making passwords harder to break would mean itwould be more difficult to assume the identity ofanother user.

"You want to know when a message comes to youthat it's from the person who it says it is,"Steen says.

One sign that HASCS has become moresecurity-conscious under Steen is hisestablishment of a policy that undergraduates maynot have the root password, which enables itsholder to view everyone's files and email.

Two students have told The Crimson that theyheld the root password in the past year, but Steensays that its access has now been cut off.

"You want to restrict the number of people whohave the root password," Steen says. "That'spolicy."

"We try to restrict it to the absolute minimumnumber of people," he said. "It's a small numberof people."

Some have said that Steen's success in handlinghis staff and outsiders has hidden the fact helacks a technical understanding of HASCS'smachines and networks.

"Frank Steen doesn't understand the technicallimitations of the systems, he is more a peoplekind-of guy," says John E. Stafford '96, presidentof the Harvard Computer Society.

Digitas Co-President Jeff C. Tarr '96 agreesthat Steen does not have an extensive technicalbackground.

But Stafford says that Steen has been extremelysuccessful at taking over some of the Office forInformation Technology's responsibilities.

"HASCS needs to be able to [add many studentcomputer names] in the fall, and OIT just didn'thave the flexibility to do this," Stafford says.

Although Stafford says Steen has been able totake over some of OIT's responsibilities, he saidthat Steen may listen too much to the Committee onInformation Technology (IT).

"The IT [committee] had one big thing, thestudent network, but hasn't done much since,"Stafford says. "Steen may listen and follow the[committee] too much."