US Cyber Guard

The US Cyber Guard Begins

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Contributed By:
Joel Harding

According to a Reuters report, US cyber defenses will now include more than just the US Cyber Command and the Department of Homeland Security.  Eventually it may include somewhere around 8,000 contractors, mostly defense contractors.
These two paragraphs illustrate the reciprocal relationship between the US government and cooperating contractors:

The Pentagon on Friday invited all of its eligible contractors to join the voluntary pact aimed at fighting what U.S. officials have described as growing cyber threats that allegedly originate, above all, in Russia and China.
The Defense Department will provide intelligence-derived information on malicious Internet traffic to the companies; the firms are to share information on any cyber penetrations of their networks with the government.

The proof of concept for this program began in 2007 and is now being expanded, initially with 1,000 contractors, and then growing.
Three ISPs, believed to be Verizon, AT&T Inc and CenturyLink Inc, are providing “filtering and remediation”, essential services to intelligence sharing.
Of course the conspiracy theorists will begin screaming “big brother” in…   3, 2, 1…   but I would rather have our government try to protect us from future cyber attacks which could be devastating to our economy, our way of life, to almost the entire world as we have become used to it.