That's precisely what
Deputy Assistant Director Keith Lourdeau, FBI Cyber Division, addressed
on 2/24 before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology,
and Homeland Security.
The Topic? Virtual
Threat, Real Terror: Cyberterrorism in the 21st Century.
The Witnesses? Besides
Mr. Lourdeau, Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Malcolm; Director
Amit Yoran, Department of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Division;
author Dan Verton; and Chief Information Security Officer Howard Schmidt
of eBay.
The Problem? The
fact is, the interconnectedness of the Internet with national infrastructure
systems has created a whole new landscape to commit crimes, and a whole
new set of tools to commit them -- a fact that terrorists and criminals
are just beginning to understand.
That's why the FBI --
with its state, local, federal, international, and private sector partners
-- is working to get out in front of plots and schemes that are still in
their formation stages. Awful things, too -- such as using Internet tools
to launch cyber attacks on infrastructure systems in tandem with physical
attacks... potentially paralyzing a city, a region, even the nation.
The Solution? Of
course intelligence development AND intelligence sharing goes to the heart
of the solution. Mr. Lourdeau talks a lot about that, and about the FBI
cyber programs that enable us to both gather intelligence and share it.
Things like:
-
honey
pot/nets and undercover operations,
-
cyber
task forces in all field offices,
-
public/private
alliances,
-
international
cyber investigative support,
-
mobile
cyber assistance teams, cyber action teams,
-
a
cyber intelligence center,
-
cyber
tactical analytical case support, and, of course,
-
a
program of "cyber investigators training" to
bring as many law enforcement officers here and
around the world up to speed on this state-of-the-art
and constantly evolving field as fast as possible.
