Defense Department taking greater steps to protect computers
The Defense Department is taking additional steps to shield
its computer networks against hackers and terrorists but it also must defend itself from insiders, lawmakers
were told Thursday.
The Department is increasingly dependent on a "global information environment" over which it has little
control, said Linton Wells, an acting assistant defense secretary. That dependence increases U.S.
vulnerability to threats externally - and internally.
"Increasingly, we see that we have to be able to guard against the inside - the Ameses and the Hanssens,"
he said, referring to veteran intelligence agents accused of espionage.
CIA officer Aldrich Ames is serving a life sentence for spying for the Soviet Union; FBI agent Robert
Hanssen, also accused of passing on secrets to Moscow, was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury
on 21 counts of espionage.
Wells spoke on the Defense Department's computer networks during a hearing before the House Armed
Services Military Readiness Subcommittee.
Technological advancements are being made to detect and respond quicker to cyberattacks, which Wells
said he welcomed because "current intrusion detection techniques are extremely limited in their ability to
identify attacks."
Marine Corp. Maj. Gen. James Bryan, who heads the Joint Task Force on Computer Network Operations, said
the nation must work harder to keep up with threats coming from all areas.
"The threat extends all the way from the juvenile hacker all the way up to, and including, sophisticated
criminals, terrorist organizations as well as some nation's state-sponsored activities," he said.
The Defense Department has done a good job blocking most attempts by hackers, but "we also realize that
we can never rest on past accomplishments," he said.
"Between 200 and 250 times a year, we do have successful intrusions into the unclassified networks of the
Department," he told lawmakers, "but to my knowledge, we have not had any intrusions into our classified
networks."
