Computer Security and the FBI
Background
"The FBI is currently investigating 1,200 acts of economic espionage and digital crime-- a 50-percent increase over last year. Figures like that underline the enormity of the task confronting people like George Vinson, supervisory special agent overseeing the FBI's San Francisco computer crime unit.
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The Site: Are companies and government doing enough to protect themselves?
Vinson: Yes. I mean, corporate America needs to protect their proprietary information and they work very, very hard and are very diligent. But, I mean, the problem is so massive they have trouble getting the arms around it. Our systems are relatively secure, but they're still penetrated. I mean, any type of technology you build to protect a system seems to be able to be defeated.... Somebody can either seem to find a way around it, underneath the firewall or they social-engineer their way into systems. The dedicated people that work 24 hours a day-- the criminals and the intelligence service people-- know when the systems are most vulnerable or when it's safest to get in and surf around.
But we have watchdog machines set up, the government does. Corporate America has what they call "tattle-tale" machines, and they track just exactly who and what is getting on [a system]. They are developing more smart cards where-- you go into a computer system, 30 minutes later it'll ask you to reidentify yourself, either through a thumbprint or some method like this-- now these aren't perfect, but they're getting better and better, and the systems are getting more and more secure.
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from:
thesite.com |
