The role of the Department of Homeland Security cyber security ch...

Subcommittee hearing Tuesday. Rod Beckstrom, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who founded business collaborative software provider Twiki.net, was chosen to lead the new DHS unit in March. Beckstrom’s duties sound like that of Greg Garcia, the department’s assistant secretary of cyber security and communications, said Chairman David Price, D-N.C.: “Who’s in charge of this initiative?” Garcia said his division has a much broader role than Beckstrom’s, including protection of the communications networks and emergency response duties. The NCSC is just coordinating various agency cyberdefense efforts, not “operating” them or exercising “direct authority,” he said. Robert Jamison, undersecretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate, said the NCSC would mostly “consolidate” information across the government but apologized that he couldn’t discuss much more about the new office, because much of the information is classified. Ranking Member Harold Rogers, R-Ky., expressed frustration that the “lay” lawmakers would have trouble understanding the NCSC’s function: “We need as much elucidation on these things as you can give us.” Clarifying the roles, Jamison said the defense of the .gov network is Garcia’s responsibility. DHS is trying to put the network in a more “defensible position” by deploying more intrusion detection systems, with the eventual goal of analyzing all network traffic in real-time, not just sampling traffic as it does now, Jamison said. It has implemented 39 “Einstein” monitoring sensors and will add more, he said. Jamison told Price that a privacy impact assessment of the new systems would be finished in the “coming weeks.” But he didn’t answer Price directly on whether DHS staff would be reviewing e-mail or “personal files” moving across the network. Price defended the roughly 350 open slots in his directorate by noting that approximately 250 were new additions in the FY2008 budget, and about 200 are in the “late stages of selection.” Garcia said his office is already planning the next Cyber Storm attack exercise for 2010. The second exercise of the series was held last month after 18 months of planning. Jamison assured Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., that emergency communications wouldn’t be taken down in the event of a repeat undersea-cable outage. The Defense Department is still investigating how multiple cables were cut the past few months but the cause seems to be “legitimate” maritime traffic, Jamison said. A large part of Garcia’s budget is for routing communications on next- generation networks so that they can get priority and circumvent bottlenecks or outages, Jamison said. DHS has a “very close relationship” with the carriers to get such priority for first responders, he said. Garcia assured Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., that his BlackBerry would have priority on the wireless network under a government emergency technology program, if he enters a special code on the device.