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I spent the early part of the week surrounded by FBI agents. Partnering with Fordham University, the FBI held the second International Conference on Cyber Security (ICCS), diving into some of the critical issues that affect Americans in terms of cyber security, cyber crime, cyber war, and cyber terrorism. In other words, anything hackers can do to us online, wreaking havoc and making us miserable. The result? Not what I expected. We're making some progress, but not enough.
As someone who previously worked in cyber security for the government and now serves on technology policy committees and as a national security fellow, it's my job to understand where we stand. As a mom, I sought information on how safe we really are. As a journalist, I just wanted the real scoop so I could get the information out there to others so you can prepare yourselves and understand how real this threat is. I also wanted to be able to tell my friends that their chance of having their identity stolen is decreasing, that the likelihood of hackers turning off our power is low, that we'll never have to go to war over a computer, and that cyber terrorists can't do real damage yet. Sadly, I can't.
On the plane from California to New York, I read most of Richard Clarke's book, Cyber War. Upon landing, I was given a stark reminder of the stakes, staring at the hole in the skyline created by the missing Twin Towers. That set the stage for the week.
Once Howard Schmidt, the new Cyber Security Coordinator, took the microphone the morning of the first day, I expected an inspirational speech about how America is going to turn around and lead in cyber security. Instead, the speech focused much more on the effects on the private sector. But as Clarke noted, the government only owns 30% of the Internet. Private companies own the fiber optic cables delivering the data as well as much of where that data is stored. So if you think the government can just up and decide to secure our critical infrastructure with a simple policy change, think again. This probably comes as no surprise, but it's complicated.
The economy is pretty grim, the planet's in peril, and oh yeah, foreign hackers have logic bombs already in the computers running our power grid and they could turn off the lights any time. Put that together with scrambling our bank databases, disabling our air traffic control systems, and leaving us open for brutal "kinetic" aka physical attacks, we're screwed. That's our new reality. Because of both the way the Internet was designed and due to the inaction of previous national decision makers, we're left with a virtual minefield ready to blow up whenever the enemy -- who could be anyone anywhere -- decides.
What do we do about it? First, we can make a conscious decision as citizens, advocates, parents, technologists and influencers that this is an enormously important issue requiring immediate attention. The day after ICCS, the BlogHer '10 conference commenced, and we were lucky to have the U.S. Senator from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, as a special guest at BlogHer. She sat down with several political bloggers and one of the questions that came up was what to do about cyber security. Her answer was the first time all week I had felt safer, because she directly addressed all aspects of the problem and as a member of Congress, she has the power to make the necessary changes. But she needs our help. In fact, she asked for it. She appealed to the BlogHer community in our meeting to do this for our community and for our children. We must act now to keep them safe.
Legislation has been proposed in the Senate and the House that will take major steps forward in terms of cyber security on
