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How Prepared is the U.S. for Cyber Terrorism?

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  • Description

    Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff weighs in on bank hack attacks.

  • Duration 4:48
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-- -- -- -- -- The -- -- cyber attacks the group claiming responsibility promising attacks on suntrust and Regions Financial this week as well joining us is Michael Chertoff was chairman of the chart up group a global security advisory firm he's also the former secretary.

Of Homeland Security Michael thanks so much for being -- here he seem like simple attack -- these denial of service attacks just.

Bombard these sites with Internet traffic but is this a test of something bigger.

While this seems to be relatively sophisticated for this kind of attack -- -- you point out it's not the most sophisticated.

Sophisticated kind of threat we see.

It does look -- like they're testing to see how.

Much they can push.

By putting a lot of volume and -- by having a relatively sophisticated.

Denial of service program.

That actually adapt to defensive architecture of the banks when used the word.

How do we verify what's the process of knowing.

Even possibly claims responsibility for something -- the person of the group that did it.

Well that's very difficult -- what we call the problem of attribution.

And part of it is you can go back in traced to servers back can kind of follow from one point to another for sometimes even that's not conclusive.

That's senator Joseph Lieberman for -- has indicated he believes it's Iranians doing -- and obviously there's motivation because we've been putting a lot of pressure on them but again it's very difficult to prove beyond a reasonable -- Now what's the end goal -- what is the baker danger he thing potentially to our financials.

While the real danger would be if they succeed in taking -- customer facing side of the bank offline for a day or two or three people wouldn't have access to their money.

That could precipitate a panic.

So what you will want to make sure is you don't compromise to trust the people have in the banking system has so much of what we do is online transactional -- That keeping that open and operating for business becomes a critical priority.

What about our level of preparation collectively when a story like this breaks you don't want to.

Exaggerate the media do you -- you don't know a lot about it yet -- -- still developing and scare everybody but at the same time how prepared.

Are we as a country or is the business community for this threat.

-- -- the financial sectors actually relatively well prepared but not as prepared as it needs to be in this case there's a good news story there risk.

Warning there was sharing of information.

Battle out other banks to start to prepare their defenses -- real -- -- subtle threat what we called the advanced persistent threat that sneaks in.

I want to for example stealing data or destroying your system and that's the hardest thing to defend against.

Better prepare though the private sector or of the government because the government is in the business of protecting information but.

Again how much do we need to be worried about attacks on my Arab government and -- let.

-- -- -- The government is pretty well prepared out quite well prepared because first of all they control the access points to government networks and they have the freedom can get into network and monitor.

In a way that the private sector doesn't necessarily have the capability of doing.

Additionally the government has intelligence sometimes we learn about the threats by looking at what the other guys planning to do.

And the key here is to get that information from the government into the hands of the private sector.

And have sharing back and force his affinity effort on Capitol Hill to get this done but -- people who were objecting and it hasn't -- -- The other part to follow up on what day get nasty is what's the role of the government in helping the private sector to be.

How prepared which is come up by the way with these Chinese companies in the recommendations coming out of the congressional panel and what -- -- So are two separate issues part of this is early warning did you want to have the government be able to warn the private sector.

When something is coming and to help them work through -- defensive position and that's happened to some extent but the current set of attacks.

The issue with the intelligence report early this week he's -- different issue is how -- we prevent our supply chain.

The hardware and the software that is in our network from being corrupted by for example or Chinese company that is controlled by are influenced by the Chinese Government.

And that I think -- -- critical issue particularly in -- global environment.

Where an awful lot of what we put on our network is made overseas.

What about -- just really quickly our potential as a nation we have.

These groups attacking us attacking these banks what about act act potential to fight back.

Using.

-- cyber attacks rather than the -- I guess -- traditional on the ground attack.

-- for a critical thing for this country is to develop the doctrine and strategy.

For defending ourselves sometimes by by retaliating or by deterring.

And that means we have to advocated -- you attack back we also have that have the rules of the road.

-- tell us what we can do we can't do.

And again this is not a -- the develop process I think there's a lot of work to be done here.

I think in terms -- capability he Americans are at the top of -- -- the rank but intrusion of a strategy and they doctrine we're not.

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