, SecurityFocus 2000-10-16
Maryland intelligence agency, fifty, seeks young, attractive corporate partners to help protect U.S. info space.
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The National Security Agency must in fact ultimately be the security expression of the American telecommunication and computing industry.
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That was the message that the director of the National Security Agency delivered at the National Information Systems Security (NISS) conference here Monday. "Information is now a place," said Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden. "It is a place where we must ensure American security as surely as we had to ensure American security in... land, sea, air and space"
As an example of that new battleground, Hayden said that during U.S. military operations over Kosovo, "our information resided and traveled on the same telecommunication infrastructure as our enemies."
Hayden warned that "the cyberterrorist, malicious hacker and even the non-malicious hacker, they can all cause great harm to that highway." Defending against that threat "requires a joint and very well coordinated effort between the government and private sector."
"I'm beginning to explore the thought, in my head and in my heart, that the National Security Agency must in fact ultimately be the security expression of the American telecommunication and computing industry," said Hayden.
The NISS conference, in its 23rd year, is organized by NSA's National Computer Security Center and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
In a keynote address, University of Pennsylvania professor and veteran technologist David Farber urged industry and government to make reliability part and parcel with the next generation of technology, but added that privacy should not be discarded in the process. "I plead to you that security and robustness can be supportive of individual privacy," said Farber.
Academia held the center stage when the NSA and NIST presented their annual National Computer Systems Security Award to Eugene Spafford, professor of computer science at Purdue University, and the director of CERIAS (Center for Education and research in Information Assurance and Security.)
Spafford fingered sloppy software engineering practices as the culprit in a wave of computer intrusions and viruses, which he said could reach epidemic proportions by 2004 as more "average users" go online. "If we project current trends we're going to have 100,000 known viruses," said Spafford.
"We basically give high school students copies of Dummies Guide to C and HTML and give them a job," said Spafford. "Everybody is looking for the cheapest lay out with the maximum amount of payoff."
The solution, said Spafford: "Start holding companies and people responsible."
