[ISN] The new cyber arms race

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.

[...]


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