What is Cyber security?

Security

What is 'Cyber' security?

'Nowhere is the problem more acute than in thinking about cyber warfare'

Friday, June 17, 2011

Phil Stewart, Diane Bartz, Jim Wolf and Jeff Mason

BANGALORE, INDIA: Experts say that one of the toughest challenges of cyber defense is, oddly, definitions. What constitutes "cyber"? Computers and digital networks, certainly. But how about digitized pictures or video streams from a pilotless Predator drone flying over Pakistan?

Who is responsible for protecting what? Where does national security begin and privacy end?

"The other big problem is lack of policy," said one former U.S. official. "(We) lack policy because we lack consensus. We lack consensus because we haven't had an informed debate. We lack an informed debate because we don't have a common pool of data. And we don't have a common pool of data because we don't share it."

Nowhere is the problem more acute than in thinking about cyber warfare. What constitutes an act of war in cyberspace? And how do you determine who it was that fired the shot?

U.S. military officials, eager to talk about how the Pentagon has boosted computer defenses, clam up when the topic turns to offensive capabilities.

The Pentagon has put together a classified list of its cyber capabilities so policymakers know their options - just as it does for more conventional weapons.

Offensive actions against foreign systems would require White House authorization. But the Pentagon does not need special approval to do the kind of cyber surveillance work that can identify vulnerabilities in foreign networks, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

That includes leaving hidden digital "beacons" inside adversaries' networks that could be used to pinpoint future targets. The beacons can phone home to tell U.S. military computers that they are still operational, the official said.

While the United States is trying to apply conventional military logic to the cyber realm, there is no global consensus about the rules of cyber war. A Pentagon report due out toward the end of the month is not expected to articulate case-by-case possibilities of when a cyber war could turn into a real one.

©Reuters