[ISN] Cyberespionage: US finds FBI agents in elite unit lack necessary skills

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2011 02:35:12 -0500 (CDT)
Forwarded from: Justin Lundy <jbl (at) tegataiphoenix.com>

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0427/Cyberespionage-US-finds-FBI-agents-in-elite-unit-lack-necessary-skills

By Mark Clayton
Staff writer 
The Christian Science Monitor
April 27, 2011 

Many of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's field agents assigned to 
an elite cyber investigative unit lack the skills needed to investigate 
cases of cyberespionage and other computerized attacks on the US, the 
Justice Department inspector general reported Wednesday.

That's a problem because the US is under constant and increasing 
cyberattack with 5,499 known intrusions into US government computer 
systems in 2008 alone -- a 40 percent jump from 2007, the inspector 
general's office found.

Investigating these kinds of cyberespionage attacks falls largely on the 
FBI as the lead agency for the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task 
force, which also includes representatives from 18 different 
intelligence agencies and is assigned to investigate the most difficult 
national security intrusions -- those by a foreign power for 
intelligence gathering or terrorist purposes.

But in interviews with 36 field agents in 10 of the FBI's 56 field 
offices nationwide, 13 agents, or more than a third, "reported that they 
lacked the networking and counterintelligence expertise to investigate 
national security [computer] intrusion cases." Five of the agents told 
investigators "they did not think they were able or qualified" to 
investigate such cases, the report said. The inspector general report 
does not indicate whether the 36 field agents who were interviewed are a 
representative sampling of the FBI’s cyber unit.

[...]

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Received on Thu Apr 28 2011 - 00:35:12 PDT

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