With attacks on sensitive computer networks increasing worldwide, a public-policy group is calling for greater cooperation between government and the computer industry to create more effective defense systems.
The report, issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, assesses the risks involved with strategic-information warfare and recommends actions to identify and counter cyber attacks.
Getting the computer industry involved in the process is an important first step, the report said, since these private companies develop and manage most of the software used in the world's computer networks.
"The industry needs to start speaking as one voice," said Frank Cilluffo, director of the CSIS Task Force on Information Warfare & Security. "It requires an open debate, and government needs to start scrubbing sensitive information.... [The] private sector needs to open up in terms of actual cases that have occurred."
The CSIS is a public-policy research group that analyzes long-term strategies in terrorism, nuclear affairs, national and international security, and international finance for both the public and private sectors.
The task force includes representatives from the intelligence community and private industry. It was formed to assess threats to critical infrastructures -- telecommunications, electric power, finance and banking, transportation, and emergency services -- and to determine the vulnerabilities of those systems.
The task force says that recent intrusions, including the first bona fide terrorist attack, carried out by Sri Lanka's rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, on the Sri Lankan embassy Web site -- are only the beginning.
Its report lays out some chilling scenarios: Cyber terrorists could potentially overload telephone lines; disrupt air traffic control and shipping systems; scramble the software used by major financial institutions, hospitals, and other emergency services; remotely alter the formulas for medication at pharmaceutical plants; change the pressure in gas pipelines to cause a valve failure; or sabotage the New York Stock Exchange.
