A page from my notebook,
Last night marked the first night that the issue of Cybersecurity came to American primetime TV. It is a show called Breaking In and the viewing party that I watched it with loved it. The show successfully appeals to adults and children, we hope it will stay on the air for > 5 years. This is the approach that we are taking to solve the biggest threat to ever exist against the US economy. The US is currently losing 1 trillion dollars per year due to Cybercrime and that figure doubles each year.
We have a serious problem and we are exhausting all available resource to meet this challenge. The United States is experiencing a human capital crisis when it comes to developing Cybersecurity professionals. There are only 1000 of us who have the expertise required to operate effectively in Cyberspace. We need 30,000 to begin to put a dent in the trillion dollar Cybercrime industry. Now, I keep hearing that Cyberspace is a civilian space, this couldn't be farther from the truth.
The US military has just added an entirely new domain onto warfare. Now humans fight via land, sea, air, space, and now Cyberspace. The Internet has been weaponized and their is currently an arms race in Cyberspace. Anyone who tells you differently is misinformed at best or executing a disinformation campaign at worst.
I have had the opportunity to work on multiple projects that give me a unique view of the scope of the problem we are facing. These projects include the Manhattan Cyber Project, The National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, and the Black & Berg Megacommunity. With the deployment of Stuxnet there is now an urgency for America to raise our Cybersecurity posture. There will be retaliation its just a matter of size and scope.
In addition to our precision guided Cyberweapon hitting it's target in Iran we also executed a brain drain against their country by assassinating two (2) of their leading Cybersecurity specialists/Nuclear scientists. We sent their nuclear program back at least another decade. They are not happy. They will look for ways to get even. Unfortunatly for the United States they won't have to look very hard. Now that the Stuxnet code is in the public domain it will be reverse engineered and repackaged and placed in the Metasploit Hacker tool kit, at which point anyone can download it from the Internet. Mysterious things are going to start happening, factories will go up in flames, gas lines will explode, and the machines that power our factories will malfunction without any obvious causes.
Make no mistake people, we are involved in a covert Cyberwar and we are engaging our enemies in Cyberspace. There is a reason that the Execuive Branch has not publicly acknowledge the fight taking place in Cyberspace.
They simply do not know what to do about it. The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity Act is going to be passed by the Senate and the President is going to sign it into law. The lobbyists have been dealt with. S.778 creates the office of National Cybersecurity Advisor within the Executive Branch of the US government and this official would answer directly to the President. This is necessary because security MUST take a top down approach else it will fail everytime.
I am pursuing this office and with a little bit of luck and a lot of prayers perhaps I will have the honor of fulfilling this role and I can begin to shore up the nations vulnerabilities. We have stimulated a Megacommuntiy (Google it) and I am taking it to the Whitehouse. You are all welcome to join me.
Joe Black CISSP CISM NSA-4011 Security+
Certified Ethical Hacker
Senior Cybersecurity Advisor / CEO
Black & Berg Cybersecurity Consulting, LLC
