NSA, AT&T picked for cybersecurity plan; Chertoff weighs in
July 7th, 2009 by JD KathuriaIn the event you missed it, big news hit before the start of the holiday weekend. On Friday, the Obama administration announced that it would tap the National Security Agency to help screen government computer traffic on private sector networks. AT&T, meanwhile, would reportedly test the system. In case you think this is deja vu all over again (think: NSA’s admission of warrantless wiretapping back in 2005), the Obama administration is quick to assure privacy advocates that government efforts would not involve “monitoring private-sector networks or Internet traffic.” DHS officials tell the Washington Post that the new program will analyze data only going to or from government systems.
The program, known as Einstein, is a carryover from the Bush administration and, as the Washington Post reports, it had been delayed for months as the Obama administration determined what components to keep in place. DHS first developed Einstein back in 2003 to track web traffic coming to and from federal departments that participated in the program. Going forward, a new version of the program, Einstein 2, is meant to address a weakness of the initial program: a failure to produce warnings that, according to GAO, are “consistently actionable and timely.” As The Wall Street Journal reports, it will take 18 months to launch Einstein 2 across most of the government; 96 smaller agencies will then follow.
Next up after that: Einstein 3. If you’re wondering what this third iteration will entail, Michael Chertoff, former homeland security secretary offered this take to the Washington Post: “Intrusion detection is like a cop with a radar gun on a highway who catches you speeding or drunk and phones ahead to somebody at the other end … Einstein 3 is a cop who actually arrests you and pulls you off the road when he sees you driving drunk.”
For more details on how the government’s response to cybersecurity will continue to unfold — and how you fit in — be sure to check out Chertoff’s talk before POC next Thursday, July 16. Details here.
Are you comfortable with the government’s approach to engaging the cybersecurity threat? Share your comments here.
Related posts:
- Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff Says NSA’s Einstein 3 Is ‘Where We Have To Go’ In Cyber Security; Calls For International Cyber Security Cooperation
- Former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff starts The Chertoff Group, joins Covington & Burling
- Michael Chertoff: National security challenges to watch
- Update: Release of 60-day cybersecurity review imminent
- Secretary Chertoff Speaks to Potomac Officers Club
[...] The plan is a reboot of a controversial Bush Administration project, dubbed Einstein, which leans on private telecom companies like AT&T (NYSE: T), with an assist from the National Security Administration (NSA), to track traffic coming to and from federal Web sites. Telecommunication companies would route data going to and from government networks through an NSA monitoring box, which would examine the traffic for malicious code or suspicious activity suggestive of a network attack. [...]
[...] the same time, the NSA is jockeying to launch a new system dubbed Einstein that would see all telecoms route data traveling to or from government networks through an NSA [...]
[...] [13] http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=94143§ionid=3510203 [14] http://blog.executivebiz.com/nsa-at-chertoff-weighs-in/3134 [15] http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/06/hbc-90005232 [16] [...]