June 8,
2008: The U.S. government has quietly
gone ahead and formed several special security organizations for policing the
internet. Because there is such a (trained, not to mention talented) manpower
shortage right now (and in the foreseeable future), this was done on the cheap.
An effective force could not be recruited, even if everyone agreed to accept
government pay levels, because of the huge expense. One solution that was
suggested even before September 11, 2001, and eventually caught on, was to
organize and reward the pro bono cybersecurity efforts that have been going on
for some time. A lot of talented whitehats just get pissed off and go after bad
guys on their own nickel. An example is HoneyNet (the pro bono network of
honeypots set up to attract, analyze and document backhat activities and
techniques). One suggestion that did not fly was setting up a "CyberCorps" as a
separate corporation, with a few really good people to run it, and enough
budget to pay market rate for the right people, and still have a close working
relationship with government agencies and commercial firms that spend a lot on
net security (banks and brokerages, for example.)
Instead, a
"Cyber Corps" program was set up to give tuition assistance to college students
studying computer security, in order to increase the number of qualified experts
in this area. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security established
working relationships with existing computer security groups, while the
Department of Defense encouraged the services to set up computer security
operations. The air force established the Cyber Command, a major operation
that, it is hoped, will give the air force the lead (and most of the budget)
for defense related Internet security operations.
The U.S.
Army sought to make something of the original CyberCorps concept, by recruiting
existing army reservists with computer security experience, and organizing them
into the Reserve Information Operations Command. So far, nearly 400 reservists
have been assigned to man five Information Operations Centers. These reservists
have civilian jobs in computer and Internet security, and most make more than
the government could afford to pay them. But in the event of an Internet
"battle", the Reserve Information
Operations Command would quickly provide the army with a collection of expert
operators to analyze, and deal with, the threat. The army is still recruiting
for this duty, and will probably continue to, in order to expand this force as
much as possible.
