Senators hold hearing on cyber security
According to Senator Susan Collins, "experts estimate that cyber crime may cost our global economy $1 trillion in losses – nearly $8 billion of that in the United States."
This is why both she and Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, held a hearing on Monday to address the "cybercrime epidemic," as a news release put it. Specifically, the hearing focused on whether members of the public and private sectors were coordinating enough to prevent attacks on critical networks.
“The bottom line is they are not doing enough, in my opinion,” Lieberman told The Hill after the hearing. “An enemy could disable our country by hijacking its financial services networks … the same goes for smart-grid networks. We’ve got to be bold.”
But some people have raised doubts as to whether legislation could fix the problem.
The biggest problem currently facing law enforcement officers may not be easily addressed by legislation. Michael P. Merritt, assistant director of the Secret Service’s Office of Investigations, said coordinating with international law enforcement agencies has become increasingly difficult.
“While cyber-criminals operate in a world without borders, the law enforcement community does not,” he said. “It is hard for Congress to implement that type of law overseas. It goes back to the personal and professional relationships we are able to establish with counterparts overseas.”
Lieberman seems to disagree with this idea, comparing cyber security to any other kind of military protection.
“The Internet now is a global asset – a new strategic high ground - that simply must be secured just as any military commander would seize and control the high ground of a battle field,” he said. “But unlike a battlefield, securing cyberspace is much more complicated to do since the Internet is an open, public entity. Security cannot be achieved by the government alone. Public-private partnership is essential. Together, business, government, law enforcement, and our foreign allies must partner to mitigate these attacks and bring these criminals to justice.”
Witnesses at the hearing included the Department of Homeland Security’s top cyber security official; the Secret Service, a representative from the financial services industry, and the head of a company that was victimized by cyber crime (you can find their testimony over here).
"These incidents can be devastating to our national security, erode our economic foundations, and ruin personal lives,” Collins said during the hearing. She also said she wanted to find out whether federal procurement standards should be updated to require private companies to incorporate better security into the technology systems they sell to the government.