Tag Archive for: Terrorism

IDG Contributor Network: What terrorism investigations can teach us about investigating cyber attacks

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Having a military background, I tend to look at all security issues with the perspective of someone who’s served in the armed forces. That means using a thorough investigation process that doesn’t treat any action as accidental or an attack as a stand-alone incident and looking for links between seemingly unconnected events.

This method is used by law enforcement agencies to investigate acts of terrorism, which, sadly, are happening more frequently. While terror attacks that have occurred in the physical world are making headlines, the virtual world is also under attack by sophisticated hackers. However, not much is said about the similarities between investigating both types of attacks or what security researchers can learn from their law enforcement counterparts. I’ve had this thought for awhile and, fearing that I’d be seen as insensitive to recent events, debated whether to write this blog. After much thought, I decided that the stakes are too high to remain silent and continue treating each breach as a one-off event without greater security implications.

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Network World Security

NSA asks Silicon Valley to help fight cybercrime, terrorism

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SAN FRANCISCO — The NSA is too big and slow to effectively fight ingenious cyber attacks without the help of Silicon Valley tech expertise, so it’s time to patch up relations between the two, the head of the NSA told a gathering of tens of thousands at RSA Conference 2016.

Attacks like the one that took down the Ukraine power grid last year can happen here – it’s just a matter of time, says Adm. Mike Rogers, director of the NSA.

Before that happens, NSA and private security experts need to come together, plan responses and practice them.

Rogers calls for the NSA and Silicon Valley to change what they’re saying to each other in order to come up with answers that best serve the country and figure out “what to do when we get penetrated,” which is just a matter of time. “We spend a lot of time right now talking about what we can’t do.”

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Network World Tim Greene

Acts of terrorism could push Congress toward encryption backdoors in 2016

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Despite the risks to online commerce, international high-tech sales, security of trade secrets and the fact that it won’t actually make encryption useless to criminals, decryption backdoors to let law enforcement access encrypted communications could become U.S. law in 2016 – and a nightmare to enterprises – especially if terrorists succeed in carrying out major acts of violence.

So far the arguments against such a law have prevailed, but that could change if public opinion turns strongly in favor of it, which is more likely in the wake of events that generate fear.

+More on Network World: 20 years ago: Hot sci/tech images from 1995 | Read all the stories that predict what is to come in 2016 +

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Network World Tim Greene

Obama wants help from tech firms to fight terrorism

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U.S. President Barack Obama is seeking the help of tech companies to combat terror threats, which he described as entering a new phase.

Obama’s remarks could put into sharp focus again the demand by law enforcement agencies for tech companies to provide ways for the government to be able to access encrypted communications.

In an address late Sunday from the Oval Office, Obama said he “would urge hi-tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice.”

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Network World Security