Feeling safe? All of us have new concerns about security: our national defense, our jobs, the financial markets, information technology, and the world at large. How do you measure security -- and what do you do to improve it? Lock the door and check the windows -- then sit down in the safety of your own home and take these lessons to heart.
Title: Vice president, Infrastructure Assurance Center of Excellence, Booz Allen Hamilton
Home Base: Falls Church, Virginia
As former director of the National Security Agency, I've seen the realm of the possible. If 30 terrorists with hacker skills and $10 million were to attack us today, they could bring this country to its knees. It would take one focused cyberattack to exploit our communications and our critical infrastructures such as the money supply, electricity, and transportation. The United States is the most vulnerable nation on earth when it comes to cyberterrorism. Our economy relies on IT networks and systems. Information is what we do.
Government and business leaders haven't fully caught up to this new environment and embraced the magnitude of change required to update our security approach. The rules for handling information were largely created in the context of World War II and the Cold War. Today, everybody is an insider. The enemy can live among us and reach us through cybernetworks. What happens when terrorists realize that they can do more damage with a cyberattack than with an explosion?
Business leaders have no idea how vulnerable they are. IT networks and systems are not secure, and they need to be raised to a sufficient level of business security. Only the CEO can decide what is an acceptable level of security, because it's a question of risk management. We can do many things to make systems more secure, but we can't yet answer the question, Is that secure enough?
Mike McConnell (fc@bah.com) chairs a team of about 1,000 Booz Allen Hamilton consultants who focus on information-security issues. Prior to joining the consulting firm in 1997, he was the director of the National Security Agency.
Title: Scholar in residence, the Ford Foundation
Home Base: New York, New York
Security takes on a truly basic meaning for people who have lived in an environment of extreme insecurity for most of their lives. For the people of Afghanistan, who have experienced the devastation of continuous conflicts for the past 23 years, security means the promotion of genuine possibility. On a recent mission to that country, I was invited to visit 109 displaced families returning to the Shomali Plain. I saw that security is fundamentally a human issue.
During my 10 years as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, I found that focusing on state security -- the traditional way of thinking about security issues -- is totally inadequate. Sure, military action and peacekeeping forces may be necessary at certain points. But the real focus should be on people and communities. So humanitarian assistance should work toward empowering people.
Real security is not about weapons. It's about the widest possible range of people having enough faith about living to see tomorrow -- that they actually start to think about the next day, the next week, the next year. Feeling secure incorporates what you might call the elements of a normal life. It's about rebuilding your house. It's about going to school. It's about having enough hope to plant in time for the spring season, because you know that spring will come.
Sadako Ogata is examining the impact of global trends on refugee protection while completing her 18-month residency at the Ford Foundation. She is also Japan's special representative on Afghan issues. Previously, Ogata served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Title: Director, Office of Homeland Security
Home Base: Washington, DC
The threat of terrorism is an inescapable, immutable fact of the 21st century. The United States and the rest of the world will have to adjust to this new reality. The need for homeland security isn't tied to any single threat but to the underlying vulnerability of American society.
The success of our nation does not deter terrorists. In fact, some people say it emboldens them. The hallmarks of modern American society that we cherish are the very things that make us vulnerable.
National security requires constant communication and collaboration. The private sector and all levels of government are working together like never before to set security standards and to share ideas. In the wake of September 11, we discovered that information on the hijackers' activities was available through databases at the federal, state, and local government levels as well as within the private sector. So we must build a system that brings together threat information from a variety of sources and transmits it to relevant law-enforcement and public-safety officials.
Email
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Buzz Up!
LinkedIn
