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ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: Federal Computer Week
26July2010 9:15amPDT
GCIS CYBER-SECURITY UPDATE: On a sweltering July day at a hotel in Washington, D.C., a room full of cybersecurity experts from government and industry watched a video simulation of an America in panic amid widespread cell phone and power outages that expanded from the Northeast across the country and eventually around the world.
Earlier that morning, the Wall Street Journal had revealed the National Security Agency's plan to protect the networks of private companies that own critical infrastructure from the sort of cyberattacks that could create that kind of havoc.
The blogosphere responded swiftly and predictably to the privacy implications of NSA�s program � the creepily named Perfect Citizen � because of the access the government�s most secretive agency would receive to private networks. The program�s technology would monitor the networks of publicly owned utilities that serve as the nation�s critical infrastructure, scanning them for any sign of a cyberattack that could cripple the country.
The meeting at the hotel was the AFCEA Cybersecurity Symposium, a forum for representatives of industry, government and the military to hash out the best strategies for protecting U.S. networks from cyberattack. It was an all-day event, but in the end, participants homed in on the collaboration between the public sector and private industry, an approach to cybersecurity that is both thorny and necessary.
�It�s important for the public to understand that there is a lot at risk,� said Army Brig. Gen. John Davis, director of current operations at U.S. Cyber Command (Cybercom) and deputy commander of the Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations. �We need to be realistic about the fact that it�s not just military networks that are at risk, it�s all networks. And we realize that military networks are built on the networks of industry.�
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[Image: www.boston.com]
