US Must Engage International Community says former Bush Assistant

This was written by Michael W. Cheek on Wednesday, December 2, 2009, 15:52.

As the US moves towards a more coherent approach to cyber security, the question has been repeatedly raised around forming an international agreement on cyber attacks. Neill Sciarrone, a former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush for Cyber Security and Information Sharing, said “taking a US centric approach is not a viable approach.”

At a recent conference hosted by Federal Computer Week and Juniper Networks, several former government cyber security professionals addressed a number of concerns surrounding the growing debate in the cyber arena. Mischel Kwon, former Director of US CERT, highlighted several of the fundamental problems surrounding discussions of cyber security. Kwon pointed to the need to find ways to discuss the problem in an unclassified manner, citing that our enemies know that we know that they are conducting cyber attacks against us.

Ken Minihan, former Director of NSA, highlighted several key points, particularly that the discussions on cyber security have been going on for two decades, discussions of cyber security must be part of the national security debate and not separate from it, the threat is real and the US has mismanaged the issue, and finally that the US needs to take the lead in the international arena to ensure that the US influence the debate, saying “shame on us if we lose that advantage.”

Sciarrone provided some useful suggestions on moving forward both domestically and abroad with cyber security plans. Domestically, she suggests that the turf battles need to end, both between agencies and in Congress. The US needs to decide what needs to be accomplished and then determine which agency is the best lead to accomplish that particular task.

Perhaps a good model for increasing international cooperation would be to give the State Department the lead for the issue abroad, and hold them accountable for it, according to Sciarrone.