The new cyber arms race

2011-03-08 12:03

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2011/0307/The-new-cyber-arms-race By Mark Clayton Staff writer The Christian Science Monitor March 7, 2011 Arlington, Va.; and Idaho Falls, Idaho Deep inside a glass-and-concrete office building in suburban Washington, Sean McGurk grasps the handle of a vault door, clicks in a secret entry code, and swings the steel slab open. Stepping over the raised lip of a submarinelike bulkhead, he enters a room bristling with some of the most sophisticated technology in the United States. Banks of computers, hard drives humming on desktops, are tied into an electronic filtering system that monitors billions of bits of information flowing into dozens of federal agencies each second. At any given moment, an analyst can pop up information on a wall of five massive television screens that almost makes this feel like Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, rather than a bland office building in Arlington, Va. The overriding purpose of all of it: to help prevent what could lead to the next world war. Specifically, the "Einstein II" system, as it is called, is intended to detect a large cyberattack against the US. The first signs of such an "electronic Pearl Harbor" might include a power failure across a vast portion of the nation's electric grid. It might be the crash of a vital military computer network. It could be a sudden poison gas release at a chemical plant or an explosion at an oil refinery. Whatever it is, the scores of analysts staffing this new multimillion-dollar "watch and warn" center would, presumably, be able to see it and respond, says Mr. McGurk, the facility director. The National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC, pronounced en-kick) is one of the crown jewels of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It is linked to four other key watch centers run by the FBI, the Department of Defense (DOD), and the National Security Agency (NSA) that monitor military and overseas computer networks. [...] ___________________________________________________________ Tegatai Managed Colocation: Four Provider Blended Tier-1 Bandwidth, Fortinet Universal Threat Management, Natural Disaster Avoidance, Always-On Power Delivery Network, Cisco Switches, SAS 70 Type II Datacenter. Find peace of mind, Defend your Critical Infrastructure. http://www.tegataiphoenix.com/

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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2011/0307/The-new-cyber-arms-race