Page 25 - UD Research Magazine Vol5-No1

As headlines and an endless crawl of news bulletins attest, cyberattacks are increasing—and increasingly productive.
Ignore them and they will make you a believer, experts say. Get used to locking down your online life—at home, at work, wherever—and you can escape many potentially destructive intrusions.
But you’ll never have 100 percent on- line security unless you get off the grid, unplugging your life from the Internet, Walker says.
That comes at a higher cost than most probably realize—losing email, texting, streaming video, cell phone service, on- line flight and hotel reservations, quick Internet searches to find clues about
the daughter’s new date, tweets from developing situations around the world, pop-up alerts warning of an approaching tornado, real-time traffic reports from GPS devices and countless other connec- tions we already take for granted.
It’s even tougher for government, business and industry networks, so working together is an essential piece of national security.
“It’s more than just a network of emails and passing information and documents,” said Walker, a nuclear physicist who spent more than three decades researching, developing and engineering strategies to protect national security. “It’s also how the nation’s critical infrastructure runs today. In years past, you opened a valve, shut a valve. Everything is done by computers now—whether refineries, petrochemical plants, transportation nodes.”
As a nexus of corporate life, Delaware is an ideal place to develop, refine and standardize cybersecurity training and protocols for business, Walker said. The state’s Chancery Court is a nationally rec- ognized authority in business law, more than half of all publicly traded companies in the U.S. are incorporated here, and the state’s financial services sector includes many of the nation’s major banks and their credit operations.
Michael Chertoff (center), former secretary of homeland security, with University President Patrick Harker (right)
and Starnes Walker at the kickoff of the UD Cybersecurity Initiative, which Walker directs.
Threat Intelligence Integration Center, designed to collect and share intelligence, much as the nation did with its counter- terrorism initiative.
Chertoff placed cyberthreats among the greatest dangers to the United States’ national security, with consequences as paralyzing, destructive and deadly as
the violence perpetrated by ISIS, Boko Haram, and other terrorist networks.
He noted several recent attacks by other nations—the Russians’ attack on the White House and a major bank, a “persistent effort” by Chinese hackers to gain intellectual property including blueprints, manufacturing processes and clinical trials of emerging drugs, and North Korea’s attack on Sony, done in protest of its movie The Interview.
“How do we not feel overwhelmed and throw our hands up?” Chertoff asked.
You beat one network by building another, he said—in this case, a network of trusted partners who work together to identify and address the dangers.
Cyberworkforce Shortage
The U.S. has a serious cyberworkforce shortage, with only 1,000 skilled specialists in the field when the nation needs as many as 30,000.
—Clandestine Information Technology Office
$100
It’s a tall challenge, though, and in
the inaugural presentation for UDCSI’s Distinguished Lecture series on Feb. 10, Michael Chertoff, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, left no one with a false sense of security.
“One hundred percent protection is not possible,” Chertoff said. “Chasing that leads to unproductive pathways.”
A better pursuit is finding ways to minimize the risk and mitigate the dam- age, he said.
The UDCSI, for which Walker
was hired last year, is meant to connect many problem solvers with backgrounds in defense, business and research. The University will contribute much to the effort—including unbiased research, proven protocols, a skilled workforce, standards for training and expertise in legal and business practices, according to University President Patrick Harker.
The work emerges as the nation tightens its cyberdefenses, with President Obama’s announcement of the new Cyber
Industry Losses
be the worst of its type on a company on U.S. soil.
—Center for Strategic and International Studies
The hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment, with MILLION costs estimated to reach $100 million, is believed to
www.udel.edu/researchmagazine |23
EVAN KRAPE