[ISN] FBI Defends Cyber Investigation Capabilities

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 00:41:57 -0500 (CDT)
http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/government/229402636

By Mathew J. Schwartz 
InformationWeek
May 03, 2011 

The FBI's field offices lack the skills and expertise that they require 
for investigating national cybersecurity intrusions, with many field 
offices facing a shortage of forensic investigators and intelligence 
analysts, as well as tactical intelligence for guiding investigations.

Those are some of the top-level findings from a Department of Justice 
Office of the Inspector General audit of the FBI's computer intrusion 
investigation capabilities, released last week.

The audit, started in 2008 as an assessment of the FBI's computer 
intrusion investigation capabilities, grew to encompass the bureau's 
ability to investigate national security computer intrusions by the 
audit's completion in 2010. The audit also assessed the effectiveness of 
the FBI-led, multi-agency task force known as the National Cyber 
Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF). Created in 2008 when President 
Obama established the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, 
the task force's job is to coordinate intelligence and investigations 
into national cybersecurity intrusions across 18 intelligence and law 
enforcement agencies. For the report, auditors interviewed personnel at 
FBI headquarters, in 10 field offices, and at the NCIJTF.

According to the audit, 36% of FBI of cyber agents thought they lacked 
the necessary IT expertise for handling national security intrusions, 
and five out of 36 agents interviewed told the auditor that they didn't 
think they were skilled enough to investigate national security 
intrusions. In addition, the audit found that sharing intelligence 
information between agencies could be challenging, with the reasons for 
withholding information not always being clear to all participants. 
Finally, it questioned the FBI's approach to rotating cyber personnel to 
new offices every three years.

[...]


___________________________________________________________      
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/
Received on Tue May 03 2011 - 22:41:57 PDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Tue May 03 2011 - 22:50:17 PDT