How secure is fiber cable?

Several years ago, I worked for the US government, I had an experience that I still think of from time to time when I talk about security policies and procedures. In this particular case, we had just installed a new confocal microscope in our lab and were connecting it to the network of workstations in our office. To do this, we had to run fiber from the lab to our office, and we had to cross the spaces of a few other offices to do this. After we filled out the necessary paperwork, got all of the necessary approvals and coordinated with the people in the other offices, a coworker and I started to run the fiber.

We came to one particular office, the security person there decided that our fiber was a security risk and tried to stop us from crossing his space with a series of irrelevant questions about how our fiber would affect the security of his space. We eventually showed him the paperwork that we had that had all the necessary approvals on it, but he still wasn’t satisfied.

“I’ll have to call the point of contact in the engineering division to make sure this is secure,” he said.

The person who I was helping happened to be that point of contact. I could tell by the look on his face that he wanted to point this out, but he decided not to. Instead, he calmly said, “Sure, go ahead and call him and see what he says.”

We then went down the hall to our office and waited for the phone call, and a few minutes after that our microscope was connected to our network.