BPC to simulate cyber attack on US

2010-02-15

The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) is to simulate a cyber attack on the US in order to gain an insight into how the government would develop a real-time response to a large-scale cyber crisis.

It will be taking place on February 16th at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, DC, and a question and answer session will be held afterwards.

Participants will include secretary of homeland security in the US Michael Chertoff who will act as national security advisor for the purposes of the demonstration and director of national intelligence John Negroponte as secretary of state.

Explaining the simulation, associate editor at the Atlantic Marc Ambinder wrote: "It will be quite realistic, featuring senior intelligence and national security officials, including former directors of intelligence agencies and combatant commands and homeland security advisers."

Neil Campbell, global managing director for security at IT services and solution provider Dimension Data, said he thought the concept of the BPC's Cyber ShockWave was a great idea.

"We all know that fire drills are important because when you're in a crisis situation you need to know what the process is and how to follow the process to minimise the damage," he commented.

Mr Campbell pointed out that he started his career in law enforcement, when he would investigate computer crime. He said he noticed that when an IT security incident happened, those looking after the case would react in an unplanned way and would overact in a manner that failed to focus on the root cause.

Instead, they would concentrate on stopping the symptoms of the attack rather than fixing the problem, Mr Campbell asserted. When this happens, attacks go on for longer, cause more damage and then cost more in the end, he claimed.

Mr Campbell added that when this scenario is translated to the scale of the US or any government, the potential for damage is huge.

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