US cyber war defenses not sufficient: Pentagon
March 17th, 2011 - 12:59 pm ICT by ANIWashington, Mar.17 (ANI): General Keith Alexander, the head of the US Defence Department’s Cyber Command, has said the US military does not have sufficient people or resources to defend the country from concerted cyber attacks.
“We are very thin, and crisis would quickly stress our cyber forces,” The BBC quoted Alexander, as saying.
Though he acknowledged improvements made in recent years, General Alexander told a Congressional Committee that he would mark as a “C” the military’s ability to protect Pentagon networks.
“We are finding that we do not have the capacity to do everything we need to accomplish. To put it bluntly, we are very thin, and a crisis would quickly stress our cyber forces,” he said.
He added: “We cannot afford to allow cyberspace to be a sanctuary where real and potential adversaries can marshal forces and capabilities to use against us and our allies. This is not a hypothetical danger.”
US officials said cyber criminals, terrorists and other nations are getting better access to state and private networks, whether to spy, to steal data or damage critical infrastructure.
However, security expert Bruce Schneier said the emotive rhetoric around “cyber warfare” did not match reality.
He said: “What we are seeing is not cyber war but an increasing use of war-like tactics and that is what is confusing us. We don’t have good definitions of what cyber war is, what it looks like and how to fight it.” (ANI)
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