Melissa Hathaway says the US must do more to avoid a creeping technological menace and urges Ireland to take on a dedicated adviser, writes Gordon Smith

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s former cybersecurity adviser has backed calls for Ireland to appoint a cybersecurity leader to advise the Government.

Melissa Hathaway, who performed a similar role for the Bush administration, said without the focus of such a person, any security strategy would only emerge piecemeal and different groups would promote their own agendas. “I think it’s important to have somebody or an office that’s responsible for the strategic view of what’s happening and understanding what policies need to be adopted and what needs to be advocated internationally,” she said in Dublin last week.

Here the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources has announced it is developing a national cybersecurity strategy. Ms Hathaway said it was important that leadership be driven by the Government rather than the private sector, which she said was “not pervasive enough”.

She said there needs to be a co-ordinated effort worldwide, pointing out that there is not even broad agreement of what constitutes a “crime” in cyberspace.

“All countries are experiencing very similar things. So therefore it’s an international problem but there’s not enough awareness of how bad the situation is,” she said.

Part of the problem is that cybersecurity can get bogged down in jargon, so the true nature of threats isn’t easily understood by senior decision-makers in industry or government.

“Most of the technology in information security is using new terms that have very little historical analogous areas,” said Ms Hathaway. “We’re talking about phishing, pharming, botnets – things that are technical in nature. So how do you find something that’s more easily translatable that everybody understands?”

Ms Hathaway said the aviation sector could be a useful comparison, with an international system that everyone abides by, whether commercial, government or military. She acknowledged that it took four decades to put that framework in place for aviation but she said some progress had already been made on internet security standards.

In the US, Mr Obama has made cybersecurity a national issue. Earlier this year, he gave Ms Hathaway the task of writing a cybersecurity review within 60 days, covering all programmes and activities under way across the entire US government structure. The report, published on the White House website (http://bit.ly/MsSgi), identified primary attack vectors for cybersecurity threats: the insider threat of witting or unwitting users who bring tainted multimedia devices into the network, or who deliberately change systems from within.

Proximity access covers the risk of infiltration using technology like Bluetooth, the short-range wireless standard. External threats involve intrusion by an outside party to a company or government network. Essential supply chains are also at risk from cyber criminals, she said. Based on her assessment, Ms Hathaway said cybersecurity readiness in the US was “significantly falling short”. The report called the country’s digital infrastructure “not secure or resilient” and noted that it had suffered intrusions that allowed criminals to steal millions of dollars, valuable intellectual property and even military secrets.

Following the review, Mr Obama said he would personally appoint a cybersecurity co-ordinator but to date no one has been given the job. There is speculation the role could be more of a consulting position than one with executive powers. In previous interviews, Ms Hathaway has expressed her frustration at not being empowered to drive change.

She resigned from the government in August, citing personal reasons. “When I came into the government I thought I would only spend two years and I stayed over 2½, almost three,” she told The Irish Times, adding she was proud of the report and felt she had completed the job Obama asked her to do. “Before I left I had the top-10 recommendations all moving forward with work streams and so I was really leaving in a good place, completing the job I had been asked to do and returning to my family which is very important to me.”

Now consulting in the public and private sector, Ms Hathaway continues to raise awareness of what she considers a major financial threat.

“I still wake up every night and every day I see or read something that scares me. I think that we need to really raise awareness quickly because it needs a much broader mobilisation nationally and internationally,” she said. “I almost think of it as the fleecing of America – it’s actually an economic war that we’re all in right now.”