Cyber-Security help wanted - hackers need not apply says Feds Written on Monday, May 28 @ 08:42:59 EDT Topic: General News The increasing sophistication of electronic attackers, coupled with growing U.S. reliance on Web-based systems has created a very dangerous environment, Clarke said at the Global Internet Project, a gathering of high-tech executives. Clarke is the Bush Administration's national coordinator for security, infrastructure Protection, and counter-terrorism. He then rants on about his crusade to get high-tech industry leaders involved with developing a new national infrastructure protection plan. He said that technologists must play a much more active role in directing national cyber- security efforts. He says the first plan was defective because it was written by Bureaucrats. Will a second plan written by Bureaucrats and Industry moguls be any better ? Cyber-security help wanted By David McGuire for NewsBytes The administration's top security coordinator Richard Clarke once warned that the United States could face an "electronic Pearl Harbor" if the nation's electronic defenses were not strengthened. He painted an equally gloomy picture earlier this week. The increasing sophistication of electronic attackers, coupled with growing U.S. reliance on Web-based systems has created a very dangerous environment, Clarke said at the Global Internet Project, a gathering of high-tech executives. Clarke is the Bush Administration's national coordinator for security, infrastructure Protection, and counter-terrorism. "The malicious actors we are looking at today are nation-states," Clarke said. Sophisticated enemy attackers pose a far more dire threat to U.S. systems than do the "14-year-old" hackers who deface Web sites, Clarke said. The federal government's top cyber-security watchdog continued his crusade to get high-tech industry leaders involved with developing a new national infrastructure protection plan. He said that technologists must play a much more active role in directing national cyber-security efforts. Clarke, who also served under former President Clinton, helped draft the nation's first infrastructure-protection plan in 1999. Clarke said that while a valuable tool, that plan -- called Version 1.0 -- did not rely heavily enough on industry input. "The first plan was a good effort, but it was written by bureaucrats," Clarke said. When authorizing the creation of a new plan, President Bush demanded that industry leaders play a central role in the process, Clarke said. Clarke said that the government could only do so much to protect the nation's infrastructure. "What we are not going to do about it is come up with new federal government regulations," Clarke said, to a smattering of applause. But that hands-off approach leaves the problem of increasing electronic vulnerability squarely in the hands of the high-tech industry, Clarke warned. "We have to be able to prove that in (public-private) partnership, the government is doing the job." Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) President Harris Miller said that the industry would be up to the challenge. "Industry is prepared to work with government in a cooperative way," Miller said following Clarke's remarks. Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com.
