Defense officials see cyberattacks as the greatest threat to U.S. national security, a survey released Monday says. Forty-five percent of respondents to the Defense News Leadership Poll named a cyberattack as the single greatest threat – nearly 20 percentage points above the second ranked threat: terrorism.
Luke J. McCormack has been named the new Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Department of Homeland Security. McCormack will lead and oversee DHS’s continuing efforts to implement information technology enhancements and security.
Following the controversial disclosures of National Security Agency surveillance practices, a presidential task force is on the verge of proposing a dramatic overhaul of the agency, CBS News reports. The task force’s draft report is due Sunday, and will be released for public review before the end of the year. The goal, the article says, is to roll out the new NSA procedures in January, most of which will be enacted through internal administration procedural changes.
Eight major technology companies, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, are joining forces to call for tighter controls on government surveillance, according to The Associated Press. The companies say in an open letter to President Barack Obama that while they sympathize with national security concerns, recent revelations make it clear that laws should be carefully tailored to balance them against individual rights.
Protecting the United States from terrorism means more to Americans than promoting democracy abroad, a Pew Research Center study found. Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Americans consider protecting U.S. shores from terrorism a top priority, according to a UPI report. The study, conducted every four years, found 83 percent of those questioned held that opinion in 2013, which is slightly down from its high of 86 percent in 2005.
Thousands of tax delinquents, including one who owes the IRS $2 million, have sensitive security clearances, posing a risk that has gone undetected by federal agencies, congressional investigators will report this Thursday.
Amid calls for stronger cyber security laws, the Department of Homeland Security is working on getting its threat-tracking system to work across its own operations and the Department of Defense. An October 24 memo from the Office of the Inspector General found that although the DHS can keep track of threats and provide updates on ongoing issues, “federal cyber operations center do not have a common incident management system tool that tracks, updates, shares, and coordinates cyber information with each other.”
The U.S. Senate approved President Obama’s nomination of James Comey with a 93-1 vote as the new Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Director, Monday, July 29.
The pact would promote information-sharing, and it would set up a cyber hotline and working group between the two countries to foster cyber security cooperation.