Today millions of computers are hooked up to the Internet, including, I suspect, almost everyone's in this room. The potential for damage just from the number of potential affected users is vast. The Melissa virus exploited a known vulnerability. If a virus attacked computers attached to the Internet utilizing an unknown vulnerability, the results could be devastating. Commerce could be significantly affected either because no information could be passed using the Internet or because information passed over the Internet might be considered unreliable.
Many businesses now rely on the Internet as a primary or even sole carrier of information.
If the Internet ceased to function, the losses could ultimately be measured in tens of billions rather that millions of dollars. The NIPC was established last year as the government's focal point for detecting, warning, analyzing, investigating, and responding to cyber threats against the critical infrastructures of the United States. These infrastructures are telecommunications, banking and finance, health services, water, energy, transportation, emergency law enforcement services, and government operations. If an attack does occur, the NIPC's role is to coordinate crisis response and investigation. However, we are not the nation's super systems administrator, responsible for securing everyone's systems against intruders or providing the latest software patches to fix vulnerabilities.