Cyberspace Security Opinion Varies Across Board

Nov 27, 2007 4:25 PM

How the military and how business and industry view cyberspace is different than how everyday people view it, an expert in security for Microsoft told The Shreveport Times.

The military sees cyberspace as "the electromagnetic spectrum," from copper wires to microwaves, where communications, control, intelligence and energy can be delivered to defend, destroy or shape the world, just like land, air, sea and space.

"But some 85-90 percent of what is critical infrastructure in cyberspace is not in government hands," says David Aucsmith, who in more than 20 years in telecommunications security work has dealt with the military, business and government agencies.

"It is in the public sector somewhere. So I would define cyberspace as the publicly accessible communications infrastructure, certainly a large and very generic term, but the Internet fits," he told The Shreveport Times. "From an attack point of view, from a cyber security point of view, it means that some guy sitting in Italy can do something to someone in some other place, or an asset they own. If they can do that, then it's cyberspace."

He will be part of an industry panel at the "Fly and Fight in Cyberspace" symposium at the Shreveport Convention Center, discussing cyberspace and security. The overall topic will be "The Evolution of Threats to Cyber Systems and How Industry is Posturing to Address Those Threats."

The moderator will be Col. Warren Ward, one of the architects of the Cyber Command now forming at Barksdale.

Earlier this year, the Baltic nation of Estonia was the target of an orchestrated denial-of-service attack, where it was flooded with e-mails and demands on its servers that shut down its education, banking, government and other services for weeks. Microsoft, which supplied many of the systems Estonia was using, helped them. "We actually spent a lot of time helping the Estonians deal with that," Aucsmith says.

But, he added, "Estonia received chaos but it didn't collapse. It had a great deal of difficulty. It isn't nearly as sophisticated an environment as much of the West is at this point in time. And it recovered rather rapidly."

The attacks also didn't come paired with a physical or military attack, and that's how Aucsmith says he believes cyber assaults will play out over time.

"If you look at the Estonia attacks, if they had come in conjunction with someone invading the country for example, then they would have been devastating," he says.

"I am not one of those who agrees that a digital Pearl Harbor is something that is a likely occurrence. The systems are resilient enough where that type of thing, a massive collapse and failure, is unlikely. What I think is far more likely are targeted, specific attacks on specific institutions or specific individuals. Whether that's criminal or that's nation-state, that's something that's certainly within the realm of possibility and is happening today."

The symposium, sponsored by 8th Air Force, the Cyber Innovation Center and handful of other entities, will focus on defense and offense. So far, just fewer than 1,500 people have signed up for the symposium.

The Shreveport Times reports that the exhibiting companies represent 29 different states and total some 100 companies and organizations, and that CISCO is bringing a large truck that will be on the exhibit hall floor that displays and demonstrates their equipment.

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