World governments need to do more to fight cyberterrorism and protect the Internet from attacks, because the Web has become so vital to commerce and communications, AT&T Inc.’s top lobbyist told reporters Wednesday.
“The [U.S.] government is not playing the role it should have all along,” said James Cicconi, senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs at AT&T. “The government ought to play a coordinating role in cybersecurity.”
Cicconi made his comments at a luncheon meeting with three reporters and an industry analyst during the International CTIA conference here, adding some emphasis to similar comments that AT&T’s security chief, Edward Amoroso, made in recent congressional testimony. Cicconi’s remarks came on the same day that two U.S. senators introduced a bill that would give federal officials the power to set data security standards for companies that operate critical infrastructure systems.
Cicconi said he was encouraged by discussions about steps the Obama administration might take to secure the Internet, including creation of a White House-level cybersecurity coordinator, or even a dedicated federal agency to tackle the problem — though he didn’t overtly praise President Barack Obama for specific cybersecurity initiatives.
He also said the U.S. government and foreign governments also ought to be doing more to bring cyberterrorists to justice. Many times, cyberterrorists are treated like folk heroes in the hacker community, he said.
Recent reports on the Conficker worm showed how the federal government had dropped the ball on cybersecurity leadership, according to Cicconi.
He contended that during the eight years of the Bush administration, cybersecurity was limited to activities inside the Department of Defense and related security agencies, when a broader policy approach was needed.
“Not one agency of the federal government has been responsible… yet the Internet is vitally important to the U.S. economy,” Cicconi said. In all, private industry has invested US$60 billion on broadband technology to help make the Internet more widely available for commercial uses, he added.
The private sector has largely been left to police the Internet against cybersecurity attacks, while the government has been “moving blithely along,” Cicconi said. “It’s akin to building a federal highway system without having the state police.”
Additionally, Cicconi urged the Federal Communications Commission and Congress to do more to support interoperability of the radio communication systems used by emergency first-responders, so that they can communicate more easily with one another.
That same plea was made earlier today in a CTIA conference keynote address by Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon Communications Inc., who called for giving radio spectrum to first responders, including thousands of police and fire departments nationwide.
Cicconi said the current policy has failed because it’s designed to encourage a public-private partnership for radio interoperability. “Congress has tried to do [interoperability] on the cheap,” he claimed. “We can’t go through another terrorist attack [such as 9/11] without such an important provision in place.”
He suggested that Congress should hold hearings on what to do, saying that, among other things, lawmakers should consider funding first responder units nationwide to deal with setting up interoperable technologies.
