Bush calls for tighter cybersecurity

WASHINGTON -- A sudden spike in the number of successful attacks against federal government information systems and databases has led President Bush to propose a multibillion-dollar response.

The number of incidents reported to the Department of Homeland Security rose by 152% last year, to nearly 13,000, according to a new government report. The security breaches, more than 4,000 of which remain under investigation, ranged from the work of random hackers to organized crime and foreign governments, says Tim Bennett, president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance.

The increase and severity of data breaches prompted Bush to recommend a 10% increase in cybersecurity funding for the coming fiscal year, to $7.3 billion. That's a 73% increase since 2004.

"The president's put a lot of emphasis on this recently," says Robert Jamison, undersecretary for national protection and programs at the Department of Homeland Security. "We're concerned that the threats are real and growing. … We're more vulnerable as a nation."

Members of Congress and experts in the private sector say the government's new is overdue.

"There are more and more bad guys out there," says Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., who chaired a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee hearing this week on government information security risks. In 31% of the infiltrations, he says, "agencies do not know who took the information or how much information was taken."

Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., who chairs the House Homeland Security subcommittee with jurisdiction over the issue, says the Bush administration "has not paid nearly enough attention to cybersecurity" until this year. Now, he says, "they're at least trying to move in the right direction."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has made improving cybersecurity one of his top four goals for 2008. "It's the one area in which I feel we've been behind where I would like to be," he told reporters here last week.

A focus on China

The Defense Department and federal intelligence agencies are on a warpath against increasing numbers of cyberattacks.