First US cybersecurity general plans online rules of engagement

Alexander said that (USCYBERCOM), which was set up to coordinate the Department of Defence (DOD) computer systems, was formulating two sets of rules of engagement for attack online by foreign powers, similar to those followed by other arms of the military.

“We should assume that foreign government actors in cyberspace have both considerably more resources and even more worrisome, motivations, than cybercriminals.”

“In short, we face a dangerous combination of known and unknown vulnerabilities, strong adversary capabilities and weak situational awareness.”

The DOD has more than 7 million machines to protect, linked in 15,000 networks with 21 satellite gateways and 20,000 commercial circuits composed of countless devices and components, and were probed by unauthorized users approximately 250,000 times an hour, over 6 million times a day he said.

He said it would take the support of private enterprise to help support and protect the network and USCYBERCOM was recruiting the teams to do the job.

“Cybersecurity is a team sport. We can’t do this alone,” he said.

During the Q&A session of the speech at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a private research group in Washington Alexander was asked about the security implications of Ipv6. The bulk of US systems still use IPv4 and many have pointed out this could pose a long term security risk.

“I think there’s a lot of folks looking at the transition from IPv4 to 6. I think it’s something that we will have to do at some point, the question of security,” he said.

“I think that’s still open for discussion, but clearly you’re going to have to take some of the benefits of IPv6, the addressing and other things.”

When asked where he stood on the role of privacy in cybersecurity Alexander, who is also head of the NSA, said oversight by all three arms of government was strong and he believed that the law was not being broken.

“Some say the Constitution is not a suicide pact, and I agree, but it’s also not something that we’re just going to throw out our civil liberties and privacy,” he concluded.

“We were built on that. that’s how our country was built. We want to ensure that we do our part to it. My responsibility, as the director of NSA, is to ensure that what we do comports with law.”