NETWORK SECURITY ATTRACTS ATTENTION OF BUSH WHITE HOUSE

Bush White House in recent months has focused on how to curb cybersecurity threats, issue that also had high priority in Clinton Administration but that has been shaped by keen interest of this White House in national security issues, sources said. Concerns are expected to be part of what is addressed this week in meeting of National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC), which includes CEOs of 30 telecom, network service provider companies and other high-tech companies. Closed -door NSTAC meeting that started Tues. night marks first time group, which meets about every 9 months, has convened under Bush Administration. National Communications System (NCS) has seen that agency’s mission “is growing,” with much of change centering on underlying communications backbones, said Brent Greene, NCS deputy dir., at TechNet 2001 International show this week. “We do a lot of information sharing,” he said. “We are beginning to accelerate how much information we're putting out into the private sector, to help them be aware of cyber challenges that we see that could potentially impact the telecommunications backbone or that could potentially impact financial processes within the vendor and finance community.”

White House tasked NCS Mon. to link cyberwarning information network, Greene said at Washington conference. One constellation of network operating centers that project will link involves those of law enforcement, White House situation room, NCS and Joint Chiefs of Staff “wired together for a real-time information sharing process,” he said. All those groups have existing network operating centers, so effort would be geared toward connecting them. “The goal for next year is to expand those links,” he said, citing effort to reach other, less critical nodes. NCS, federal agency organized under Dept. of Defense, frequently is assigned by White House to issues related to linking and extending communications facilities and parts of federal agencies, with focus on national security and emergency preparedness.

Greene said NSTAC paperwork pending in White House would finalize addition of 2 new companies to the panel -- Dell Computer and Global Crossing. Meeting also marks rise of Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio to high-profile Washington role as vice chmn. of panel, meaning he’s in line to head committee next year; it’s now run by Raytheon CEO Daniel Burnham. Qwest hadn’t been part of panel before, although then-U S West CEO Solomon Trujillo had been on committee. Also on panel are chiefs of AT&T, BellSouth, Lockheed Martin, Lucent, Motorola, Nortel, Sprint, Teledesic, Verizon.

In some ways, attention that White House has placed on cyberthreats is notable because it represents most acute interest that Administration is giving to high-tech issues, Precursor Group analyst Bill Whyman said. “It’s an evolution of pre-existing efforts,” he said, noting that Clinton Administration had devoted significant resources to technology policy arena. “It reflects the security focus, the defense focus of this Administration,” Whyman said. “It stands out given the relative lack of interest in [defense and security] technology issues compared to the last Administration. This is one area where there is some activity.” Level of interest provides contrast to “glaring omissions” of Bush Administration on broader technology front, he said. Another industry source said interest in potential cyberattacks was far from being new govt. issue, with efforts to address it institutionalized in agencies such as FCC and Dept. of Commerce. Another source said interest of Administration in how to protect communications networks and Internet backbones had been apparent in preparations for this week’s NSTAC meeting.

Greene cited companies that are resident in NCS’s National Coordinating Center at NCS hq, including Alcatel, AT&T, BellSouth, Cincinnati Bell, Cisco, Ericsson, Qwest, SBC, Sprint, Verizon, WorldCom. He also outlined NCS system that brings together network operating centers of private companies’ govt. operating centers. NCS is “expanding the number of companies that are linked into this national alerting and coordinating network and we are establishing a dial up capability for real-time information sharing.”