Cyberterrorism is so much easier, its only goal is to find resources and destroy them. The threat of information warfare grows by the day. Countries are developing a capacity for information warfare, and the federal government needs to be prepared for that kind of attack, should it come, says Sallie McDonald, assistant commissioner of the General Services Administration s Office of Information Assurance and Critical Infrastructure Protection. Over the last decade, numerous civilian and military teams have been created to monitor government networks and react to the ever-growing number of cyber events. The Defense Department identifies thousands of intrusions into its systems every day.
More serious breaches occur as well.
In 1999, the Air Force, Army and Navy reported 600 attacks. In 2000, that number grew to 715. If the Defense Department is under cyberattack, the rest of the federal government needs to hunker down, McDonald says. We need to prepare ourselves for this crisis-type situation by going through exercises just like the military does. McDonald s organization is in the thick of helping protect civilian agencies.