Summary of COL Brickey’s Presentation on “Cyber Threat to the Nation’s Infrastructure”

Summary of COL Brickey’s Presentation on “Cyber Threat to the Nation’s Infrastructure”

Summary of presentation and

PowerPoint to the NSF on the 

“Cyber Threat to the Nation’s Infrastructure”

In the future Cyber terrorism may be a vital national security concern.  That refers to the use of Cyber capabilities to conduct enabling, disruptive, and destructive militant operations in Cyberspace.  Though there have been no destructive Cyber terrorism attacks to date, the U.S. believes that terrorists have the intent and the capability is within reach to cause massive economic disruption and physical damage to critical infrastructure such as the power grid, fuel distribution, water systems, air traffic control, and financial networks (especially ATM systems).  Many of these critical systems are either directly connected to the Internet, or indirectly inaccessible via “air-gapped” networks.

Increased cyber security is thus vital to protecting America’s national interests, critical infrastructure, and intellectual property.  Adversaries ranging from foreign state actors to corporate spies continue to exploit vulnerabilities in U.S. networks, systems, and practices.  The risk of cyber insecurity is most troubling in the case of companies that operate critical infrastructure such as the electric grid, dams, and the servers that process financial transactions.  These companies are clear targets since their operations affect public safety.

While most companies accept at least a degree of responsibility for the protection of their own networks, it is not clear that they are capable of providing themselves with robust security.  Currently, there is no Federal agency charged with protecting America’s interests in cyberspace–although DHS (Homeland Security) coordinated the overall Federal effort to PROMOTE the security and resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure, it lacks capabilities and capacity to do it alone.

The Role of the Defense Department in Countering Cyber Threats

Directors of our nation’s intelligence agencies now consider Cyber to be the number 1 threat we face.  Cyber space is now the newest domain to do things—good and bad: war, crime, terrorism, espionage, civil disobedience, etc. The range of sources of Cyber threats run from nation states to organized syndicates and down to individual activists, anarchists, and “hacktivists”.

The nation will likely turn to its military in times of crisis, regardless of the conflict’s domain.  Though the Department of Defense (DoD) has considerable capabilities for cyberspace operations, including securing and defending the DoD information networks, defending the nation in cyberspace is a Herculean task. Threats are developing faster than our ability to protect against them.  DoD systems alone are probed by unauthorized users approximately 300,000 times per hour, over 8 Million times per day.

The bottom line is that the adversary is in our networks and neither the US Government nor private industry can defend the networks on which our economic and national security depend.

Where are the Cyber Threats emanating from?

Interestingly, Colonel Brickey did not include known terrorist groups in this ranking.  He observed that while the terrorists want to operate in this domain, they currently lack the capability to launch cyber attacks.  If they had it they would have already used it.

With respect to Nation States, the U.S. has the greatest Cyber offensive capability, followed closely by Russia and then China.  Iran and North Korea are rapidly growing their capabilities, but they are not significant as yet.

If there were a war between those countries listed above, “Cyber dependence” would be a major disadvantage, as well as a necessary component of any country’s capabilities.

Both China and Russia engage in espionage designed to steal our commercial as well as government secrets.  They obviously also have developed capabilities to cause severe damage to our warfighting elements should a conflict take place.  Most experts regard China as the “most threatening actor in Cyber Space”.

Conclusion

Protecting American infrastructure from these attacks is unfortunately the responsibility of many departments rather than a single one. Neither Justice, Homeland Security, nor the Pentagon has comprehensive responsibilities.  A recent Presidential Policy Directive (PDD-21) calls for the government to work with private industry to strengthen the security and resilience of the country’s critical infrastructure. However, PDD-21 only laid out some voluntary guidelines and best practices to improve Cyber-security.

Trying to navigate through the legal and policy morass creates difficult challenges for those addressing cyber issues. One has to wonder if it will take a catastrophic event that would impel us to implement the necessary policy changes to protect the nation. Until then, Murphy’s Law will probably rule—that is, these sort of crises events will occur “between the seams,” where no one agency seems to have overall responsibility and capabilities.

Or will it be over before we even know it?

For COL Brickey’s presentation, please click here.