McConnell Sets Cyber 1.0 Tone

"The nation is at significant strategic risk."

This is how the Honorable John M. "Mike" McConnell, USN (Retired), executive vice president, Booz Allen Hamilton, and former director of national intelligence characterized the current state of cyberspace in his keynote remarks at this yesterday's Cyber 1.0 conference at the 26th National Space Symposium at The Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colo.

McConnell explained that the threat is broader than passive data gathering data. His concern is active attacks upon U.S. strategic interests; for example, attacks on the infrastructure of banks or insurance companies,

One of the issues of protecting strategic assets, according to McConnell, is creating an integrated solution: "NSA is allowed to exploit, DoD is in charge of attack, DHS is in charge of protecting the nation, but, in cyber, these activities are very closely related."

The biggest issue is not nation states, which can be naturally deterred, McConnell said, but extremists who want to destroy the system. "Terrorist attack on a bank could have a greater order of magnitude economic impact than the 9-11 attacks.

"We have a threat that is of strategic importance to the nation and we need to think about how to support government, commercial, and private industry."

He said that exploitation is the enabling capability and that the U.S. needs to build on this capability: "exploit, attack, and defense are all important."