If your system uses any external telecommunications, a screen warning banner must appear prior to the log on sequence. Public Law 99-474 requires that a warning message be displayed, notifying unauthorized users that they have accessed a U.S. Government computer system and unauthorized use can be punished by fines or imprisonment.

NOAA requires that every computer system owned by NOAA have a warning banner at every access point (i.e, FTP, telnet, web pages, remote log in). Every computer will require changes to its system files to ensure that a banner is displayed whenever the system is turned on or a user attempts to log on. That banner must warn authorized and unauthorized users as to

The technical details for implementing banners are dependent on particular operating systems and access points. To help in this endeavor, the Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC) has compiled banners for different access points for the following platforms: Macintosh, Windows NT, Windows 95, 98 Windows 3.11, DOS, and UNIX systems. The following links are provided to assist system administrators in creating banners, and to provide examples:

CIAC - Create Warning Banners
To create banner for NOAA WEB Pages
Department of Commerce List of Screen Warnings