The Obama administration declassified part of the governments cybersecurity plan Tuesday, publishing parts of it that discuss intrusion detection systems for federal computer networks and the governments role in securing critical infrastructure.
The declassification announcement was made by Howard A. Schmidt, a former Microsoft security executive who in December was appointed cybersecurity coordinator by President Barack Obama. Schmidt was speaking at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco, an annual industry conference for computer security professionals.
The governments Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative was launched in 2008 by President George W. Bush under a shroud of secrecy. The plan has 12 directives that cover the governments strategy to protect U.S. networks including military, civilian, government networks and critical infrastructure systems as well as the governments offensive strategy to combat cyberwarfare.
Civil libertarians criticized the Bush administration for failing to disclose the contents of the plan or allowing independent oversight of its implementation. Schmidt said that Obama recognized the need for some transparency.
There are a lot of legal issues about what were doing, he told the 2,000-member audience, adding that the government was currently working on a list of about 40 legal questions related to the cybersecurity initiative.
Obama said last May that he planned to appoint a separate official to ensure that the implementation of the cybersecurity plan doesnt violate privacy and civil liberties and insisted that the governments plan would not include spying on the public.
Our pursuit of cybersecurity will not include I repeat, will not include monitoring private sector networks or internet traffic,he said. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans.
A White House spokesman said Tuesday that the administration had appointed Tim Edgar to oversee the privacy aspects of the cybersecurity initiative. Edgar, a former attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, has been working as the deputy for civil liberties for the Civil Liberties and Privacy Office of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The declassified portion of the plan published Tuesday includes information on only part of the initiative and does not discuss cyberwarfare. The plan instead discusses the deployment of Einstein 2 and Einstein 3, intrusion detection systems on federal networks designed to inspect internet traffic entering government networks to detect potential threats.
DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is deploying, as part of its EINSTEIN 2 activities, signature-based sensors capable of inspecting Internet traffic entering Federal systems for unauthorized accesses and malicious content. The EINSTEIN 2 capability enables analysis of network flow information to identify potential malicious activity while conducting automatic full packet inspection of traffic entering or exiting U.S. Government networks for malicious activity using signature-based intrusion detection technology. EINSTEIN 2 is capable of alerting US-CERT in real time to the presence of malicious or potentially harmful activity in federal network traffic and provides correlation and visualization of the derived data.
The EINSTEIN 3 system will also support enhanced information sharing by US-CERT with Federal Departments and Agencies by giving DHS the ability to automate alerting of detected network intrusion attempts and, when deemed necessary by DHS, to send alerts that do not contain the content of communications to the National Security Agency (NSA) so that DHS efforts may be supported by NSA exercising its lawfully authorized missions.
The Einstein programs have raised concerns among privacy and civil liberties groups, such as the Center for Democracy and Technology, because they involve scanning the content of communications to intercept malicious code before it reaches government networks.
The declassification announcement was made by Howard A. Schmidt, a former Microsoft security executive who in December was appointed cybersecurity coordinator by President Barack Obama. Schmidt was speaking at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco, an annual industry conference for computer security professionals.
The governments Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative was launched in 2008 by President George W. Bush under a shroud of secrecy. The plan has 12 directives that cover the governments strategy to protect U.S. networks including military, civilian, government networks and critical infrastructure systems as well as the governments offensive strategy to combat cyberwarfare.
Civil libertarians criticized the Bush administration for failing to disclose the contents of the plan or allowing independent oversight of its implementation. Schmidt said that Obama recognized the need for some transparency.
There are a lot of legal issues about what were doing, he told the 2,000-member audience, adding that the government was currently working on a list of about 40 legal questions related to the cybersecurity initiative.
Obama said last May that he planned to appoint a separate official to ensure that the implementation of the cybersecurity plan doesnt violate privacy and civil liberties and insisted that the governments plan would not include spying on the public.
Our pursuit of cybersecurity will not include I repeat, will not include monitoring private sector networks or internet traffic,he said. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans.
A White House spokesman said Tuesday that the administration had appointed Tim Edgar to oversee the privacy aspects of the cybersecurity initiative. Edgar, a former attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, has been working as the deputy for civil liberties for the Civil Liberties and Privacy Office of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The declassified portion of the plan published Tuesday includes information on only part of the initiative and does not discuss cyberwarfare. The plan instead discusses the deployment of Einstein 2 and Einstein 3, intrusion detection systems on federal networks designed to inspect internet traffic entering government networks to detect potential threats.
DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is deploying, as part of its EINSTEIN 2 activities, signature-based sensors capable of inspecting Internet traffic entering Federal systems for unauthorized accesses and malicious content. The EINSTEIN 2 capability enables analysis of network flow information to identify potential malicious activity while conducting automatic full packet inspection of traffic entering or exiting U.S. Government networks for malicious activity using signature-based intrusion detection technology. EINSTEIN 2 is capable of alerting US-CERT in real time to the presence of malicious or potentially harmful activity in federal network traffic and provides correlation and visualization of the derived data.
The EINSTEIN 3 system will also support enhanced information sharing by US-CERT with Federal Departments and Agencies by giving DHS the ability to automate alerting of detected network intrusion attempts and, when deemed necessary by DHS, to send alerts that do not contain the content of communications to the National Security Agency (NSA) so that DHS efforts may be supported by NSA exercising its lawfully authorized missions.
The Einstein programs have raised concerns among privacy and civil liberties groups, such as the Center for Democracy and Technology, because they involve scanning the content of communications to intercept malicious code before it reaches government networks.
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