Local Panel Will Oversee Protection Of Systems From Hackers
March 29, 2011
Vastopolis -- Mayor Douglas Lark ordered the creation of a commission to recommend laws and regulations to protect vital government and private systems against attacks by terrorists or computer hackers. On the national level, he described the effort as having the ``same level of urgency'' as the Manhattan Project, the crash World War II effort to develop the atomic bomb. Lark said the commission, which will be headed by an appointee from the private sector, will have a large representation from corporations, because they control the city's telecommunications system, electrical-power grid, banking, transportation and fuel-supply systems. ``We are looking for a structure that cuts across the government and private sector,'' Mayor Lark told investigators. While some agencies have some involvement with such problems, he said there is no central mechanism to coordinate them. While the new Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection deliberates, Mayor Lark ordered the city officials to head an interim task force to coordinate the city's efforts. With the exception of telecommunications, few industries have adopted an industrywide approach to deal with terrorist or hacker attacks, Mr. Lark said. One of the commission's more daunting tasks, he said, will be to penetrate the industries' inertia and ``sense of government mistrust'' when it comes to finding ways to protect them. Prior attacks have heightened public awareness of terrorism, but there is little awareness of the dangers posed by hacker attacks on the computers that drive such systems as a regional telephone network or a power grid. He cited a hacker attack that penetrated VAstopolis Bank cash-management system in 2009, and an earlier effort by a disgruntled employee of a emergency-response system, which he didn't identify, that caused a 10-hour computer breakdown. Such threats, he said, are likely to multiply. Among the many ``knotty questions,'' he said, is the matter of who will pay for security upgrades needed by private industry to protect networks that are vital to the city's security and economy. Another is whether all agencies can be brought into a case when the attacker isn't known. Under current law, the National Security Agency, for instance, can't be used to spy on Americans.
