U.S. officials: Information sharing key to security

IDG News Service - The U.S. government is getting better at sharing information among the various agencies that are responsible for protecting the nation against terrorism, but IT can help drive more improvements, two top-ranking antiterrorism officials said yesterday.
Two federal officials told a crowd of about 450 people -- mostly federal, state and local workers who deal with domestic security issues -- that the U.S. government has improved its information-sharing capabilities since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. "We're not there yet. We're getting there," said Donna Bucella, director of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center. "I want to prove the naysayers wrong. I want to prove government can work together."
Bucella and Daniel Ostergaard, executive director of the Homeland Security Advisory Council in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, both touched on IT during their speeches at the fourth annual Government Symposium on Information Sharing and Homeland Security in New Orleans.
Better sharing of information among government agencies is key to preventing further terrorist attacks on the U.S., Ostergaard said. "Either stop it before it happens, or you're cleaning it up afterwards," he said. "I'm focused on stopping it before it happens.
"It's only a matter of time before the bad guys get the code to [nuclear bomb]," he said. "A weapon of mass destruction going off in downtown New Orleans or New York or Washington, D.C., is not an option."
Ostergaard cited Internet-based control systems for water treatment plants as an example of IT systems that can be used to better protect the so-called critical infrastructure systems in the U.S. While workers in many water treatment plants can check the status of on/off valves with Web-based programs, more pieces of the critical infrastructure need systems that pinpoint problems and quickly find work-arounds for them, he said.
The U.S. government has defined 17 national systems -- including the electrical grid, food system and water supply -- as part of the nation's critical infrastructure. Ostergaard advocated more use of automated systems to protect those systems.
"We need a system that's self-aware, resilient, self-restorative and protects the critical infrastructure," he said. "If something does happen, it has to be self-restorative."
In addition to some aging critical infrastructure, the DHS faces a number of other challenges to the sharing of information, Ostergaard said. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies spent several decades trying to keep much information secret during the Cold War, when there was one main adversary instead of potentially dozens of small terrorist cells.
As government agencies try to move away