Security News > 2009 > May > Defense Dept., Industry Join to Protect Data

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/24/AR2009052402140.html By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer May 25, 2009 LINTHICUM, Md. -- At 2:42 p.m. one recent Wednesday, on the fourth floor of a squat brick office building under the flight path of jets landing at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, a Pentagon analyst skilled in parsing malicious computer code e-mailed a threat alert to 28 of the nation's largest defense contractors. That morning, a defense company had told the Defense Department Cyber Crime Center about a significant probe of its computer network. The Pentagon analysts determined the code was present in several companies' networks and raised the alarm. This information exchange took place, government and industry officials said, because the companies and the Pentagon have begun to trust one another. They are joining forces to stem the loss of important defense industry data -- by some estimates at least $100 billion worth in the past two years, reflecting the cost to produce the data and its value to adversaries. For two years, the Defense Department has been collaborating with industry to try to better protect the firms' computer networks. Now, as the Obama administration ponders how to strengthen the nation's defenses against cyberattacks, it is considering ways to share the Pentagon's threat data with other critical industries, such as those that handle vastly larger amounts of data, including phone calls and private e-mails. The threat scenarios, experts say, are chilling: a months-long blackout of much of the United States, wide-scale corruption of electronic banking data, a disabling of the air traffic control system. [...] 5B --

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/24/AR2009052402140.html