Editor's Perspective
Written by Harrison Donnelly
During debate over reorganization of the intelligence community and creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) a few years back, the most controversial issue by far concerned the role and authority of Department of Defense agencies in the intelligence community. A similar donnybrook may be coming along, I suspect, as the nation considers new ways to improve cybersecurity.
Even as the Obama administration conducts a review of the state of cybersecurity, a bipartisan pair of senior senators (John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine) in early April introduced comprehensive legislation to coordinate and intensify cybersecurity efforts in both the public and private sector.
A key provision would create an Office of National Cybersecurity Adviser within the White House to take the lead role on all cyber matters. That contrasts with the approach taken by the Bush administration, which looked to the Department of Homeland Security and its National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC).
Earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair staked out a position in favor of NSA as the point of the spear in the cyber fight. “The National Security Agency has the greatest repository of cyber talent,” he told the House Intelligence Community in February. “There are some wizards out there at Fort Meade who can do stuff. I think that capability should be harnessed and built on as we’re trying to protect more than just our intelligence networks or our military networks as we expand to our federal networks and to our critical infrastructure networks.”
Soon after, though, Rod Beckstrom, director of NCSC, resigned his position and issued a sharp attack on NSA’s role. “NSA currently dominates most national cyber efforts. While acknowledging the critical importance of NSA to our intelligence efforts, I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds. The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or security culture,” he said, adding that concentrating authority in one organization could pose a threat to democratic processes.
Expect to hear a lot about this issue in the months to come.
Harrison Donnelly, Editor
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