The China Syndrome

SC Magazine is reporting that according to experts like Alan Paller of SANS, there is empirical evidence that China has already succeeded in penetrating key government and industry databases. The issue now is no longer keeping them out, but getting them out. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McDonnell reported in the New Yorker that the Defense Department is seeing about three MILLION unauthorized probes per day against it's networks. And Ed Giorgio, a security consultant who worked for McDonnell, says China has 40,000 hackers collecting info off of U.S. systems and those of it's allies.

More info here

http://scmagazine.com/uk/news/article/778689/china-penetrated-key-usdatabases-%20sans-director/

China, predictably, continues to deny these allegations, calling them "preposterous". The question is what to do now? China is a major trading partner (we import 5 to 1 more than we export) and a bank roller of huge amounts of Federal debt (about a trillion dollars or about 20% of the total). Yet from what we are seeing, their actions in cyberwarfare are about the equivalent of what we should expect from a nation openly hostile to us, like Iran or North Korea.

Finding a workable solution for this situation is going to be sticky, and the longer we wait the more at risk we become.

SANS Management 512 Course in the Windy City

Stephen Northcutt is bringing the Management 512 course, Security Leadership Essentials for Managers with Knowledge Compression, to Chicago this March. Course dates for the 5 day course are March 3rd through the 7th.

If you're interested, full info available here:
http://www.sans.org/ohare08/description.php?tid=1627

GIAC Hits Twenty Thousand Mark

GIAC, (http://www.giac.org/), the certifying body of SANS (http://www.sans.org/) recently hit the 20,000 mark for certified security practitioners. Congratulations, SANS! GIAC also recently completed their requirements and received ISO\ANSI 17024 accredidation.

Please visit the GIAC or SANS site for more information. SANS not only provides what I believe to be the industry best training you can obtain, it's also a fantastic resource for network/information security information.

GIAC stands for Global Information Assurance Certification.
SANS stands for SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security.