WASHINGTON-Interoperability is not easy, but it is something that needs
to happen and it is something Congress is concerned about, said Rep. Mac
Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the House cybersecurity
subcommittee.
“One of the things we talk a lot about in the halls of
Congress is interoperability,” said Thornberry. “We have made some
good first steps in getting everybody talking about how we can have a basis and
standard of interoperability at a specific level. We have had some interim fixes
in hardware and software that have helped in the meantime. You are going to have
to have a national roadmap that deals with spectrum issues and a whole variety
of things before you really solve the interoperability problem, which we know
was an issue on Sept. 11 and continues to be.”
Interoperability between
first responders has long been a conversational topic for policy-makers, but
Thornberry said the problem is complex.
“It seems like it ought to be
simple for everybody to go out and have the same radios so the police in one
county can talk to the firemen in the next, and yet when you get into it, there
are a number of complex issues that technology alone simply will not
solve,” said Thornberry.
Thornberry appeared last week at the National
Press Club Tech Talk. His topic was advertised as “cybersecurity,” but
he touched on many homeland-security topics. For example, he said he has been
frustrated with the development of the Department of Homeland
Security.
“The direct answer is no, the Homeland-Security Department has
not met my expectations or my hopes, and there are a variety of factors. It took
forever to get people into DHS,” said Thornberry. “It took a long time
to get up and running.”
Thornberry would like to create an assistant
secretary within DHS to oversee cybersecurity. “I believe cyber has unique
challenges,” he said.
Unlike many experts who believe the next major
terrorist attack will include a cyber component, Thornberry is not so sure.
“It is pretty unlikely that terrorists are going to use the Internet to
control a nuclear-power plant or a hydrological dam or some way this is going to
hurt or kill huge numbers of Americans. It is not something to ignore, but it is
unlikely,” he said. “We know terrorists use the Internet to
communicate with one another, and it makes it very difficult to trace so they
have an interest in keeping it up and running to facilitate their own
communications.”
Thornberry did acknowledge that there is an intersection
between the physical critical infrastructure-like the telecommunications
network-and the cyber network, and that attacking both simultaneously could
happen.
“I think the intersection between the physical and cyber
infrastructure is a topic of high-interest among terrorists-partly as I
mentioned in a combination sort of attack-you can increase the devastation, you
can reduce the response, you can increase the chaos by combining them,”
said Thornberry.
Cybersecurity is seen as one of the challenges that must be
overcome before broadband can become universal, according to Scott Kriens,
chairman and chief executive officer of Juniper Networks.
“With dial-up,
people generally logged on for an hour or so-a brief window for hackers and
viruses to contaminate a home personal computer or network. As broadband
maintains an ongoing link to the Internet, users and networks are more
vulnerable and susceptible to malicious attacks. This is a problem that will
grow proportionally with the ever-growing number of broadband users,” wrote
Kriens. “This year, the presidential campaign is giving broadband
much-needed exposure, but it needs to be included on the national agenda. In
addition, to government policies such as subsidies for schools and other public
agencies, the industry needs to examine ways to protect and improve our
networks.”
