NCJ Number
189910
Date Published
2000
Length
199 pages
Annotation
This document is an attempt to develop a plan to defend the Nation’s cyberspace.
Abstract
Critical infrastructures are those systems and assets, both physical and cyber, so vital to the Nation that their incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on national security, national economic security, and/or national public health and safety. America is vulnerable to cyber attacks because it has quickly become dependent upon computer networks for many essential services while paying little attention to protecting those networks. The threat is that in a future crisis a criminal cartel, terrorist group, or hostile nation will seek to inflict economic damage, disruption and death, and degradation of our defense response by attacking those critical networks. While all the proposals in this plan have been developed in a manner fully consistent with existing law and constitutionally guaranteed expectations of privacy, portions of the plan may give rise to concerns that personal privacy rights may be sacrificed in exchange for infrastructure assurance objectives. The current version of the plan has been designed around three broad objectives: preparing and preventing; detecting and responding; and building strong foundations. The goal of the plan is to achieve a critical information systems defense with an initial operating capability by December 2000, and a full operating capability by May 2003. When that systems defense is in place, the United States should have achieved the capability to ensure that any interruption or manipulation of these functions be “brief, infrequent, manageable, geographically isolated, and minimally detrimental to the welfare of the Nation.” 4 annexes