Cyber U. Universities’ role in training potential cyber adversaries came to the fore at a congressional hearing March 21. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) equates American universities’ education of mainland Chinese students with equipping a hostile power with the ability to build a nuclear weapon. “That is an insane, national suicidal policy,” he says. He suggests Mandiant follow up its February report on Chinese military hacking with an investigation of whether any hackers in 61398 were students at American universities.
Cyber Defense. Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, proposes an “80 percent solution” for stopping cyber attacks. With limited resources and growing intrusions, Cilluffo suggests the government focus its resources on higher end threats while private sector security firms address the lower end. It will be impossible to neutralize all Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), so Cilluffo offers this compromise at a hearing March 20. He says Congress should consider incentives for firms participating in cyber security as it begins writing cyber legislation this year.