The U.S. government’s already-dismal record on computer security was recently topped off by word that the number of federal employees whose fingerprints were stolen by hackers from the computers of the Office of Personnel Management was 5.6 million — more than five times the previously announced 1.1 million. Altogether, some 21.5 million federal employees are believed to have been affected by the theft of background investigation records that include addresses, birth dates and Social Security numbers.
There’s only one bit of good news we can extract from this fiasco, and we reported it Sunday: The government knows the right place — or at least one of the right places — to get help.
Development of methods to quickly detect a cybersecurity breach is the focus of one of five projects in a pathbreaking research partnership between the Naval Academy and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The work is being funded with $2 million from the Office of Naval Research and will involve midshipmen.Karl Steiner, the vice president for research at UMBC, explained that the idea of the anti-hacking project is to enable systems to better monitor themselves and raise a red flag when there is an “anomaly” — that is, a possibility someone unauthorized is rummaging around in the database. The four other projects involve better protecting cellphones, strengthening the security of cloud-storage systems, building hardware to detect anomalies and signal a breach, and fortifying the defenses of social media networks.We trust this is just one of many federally funded research projects going on now. In the area of computer security, hackers who are likely in the pay of unfriendly foreign governments are not only eating Uncle Sam’s lunch, but his breakfast, dinner, late-night snacks and leftovers. The government needs to get the best and brightest to work on these problems — and it’s evidently not going to find them at OPM.
We know some of that talent is right here in Annapolis. The academy is going all-out on cybersecurity — the first graduates to major in it will be in the Class of 2016. The last major addition to the Yard will be a $120 million cybersecurity center.
The academy’s program, said Academic Dean Andrew Phillips, includes the ethics of cyberwarfare. Unfortunately, it’s just as well midshipmen talk about when a computer intrusion could actually be considered an act of war. Given the recent pattern of events, the issue may not remain an academic one much longer. The next Pearl Harbor or 9/11 may be online.
We’re not sure what John Paul Jones — or even Bull Halsey — would have made of this, but it’s certainly in keeping with the academy’s mission of training midshipmen to combat threats to this nation.
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