On October 4th, 2011, Wired reported on how former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden urged Congress to allow the NSA to monitor public networks in order to defend against malicious activity coming from nation states and others. Gen. Hayden told the House Intelligence Committee that the NSA has the capability to protect public networks, but it needs policy guidance in order to get into the field. In 2009, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair also told the House Intelligence Committee that the NSA, rather than the Department of Homeland Security, was the only agency with the skills needed to secure cyberspace.
Former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., in 2009. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)
Gen. Hayden acknowledged that there was “a natural political cultural allergy" to letting NSA monitor private networks. The NSA’s role in the Bush Administration’s warrantless domestic spying program raised concerns that the agency can't be trusted to monitor networks without violating the privacy of citizens. However, Gen. Hayden noted that there were ways the spy agency could monitor public networks without reading the content of communications.
Art Coviello, executive chairman of RSA Security, echoed Gen. Hayden's beliefs. Coviello told lawmakers “We ought to be able to figure out a way for the NSA, which has so much expertise, to work their way in an ethical way to protect us. To me it’s a tragedy that we can’t get them more heavily involved working with Homeland Security to a point where they can be more effective protecting American organizations.”
The source article can be found here.
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