U.S. Cybersecurity Director Resigns, Blames NSA

The government's director of cybersecurity resigned Thursday, warning that the National Security Agency's control of national cybersecurity efforts poses a potential threat to U.S. democratic processes.

Rod Beckstrom, a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur, was appointed in March 2008 to run the National Cybersecurity Center, a group created to oversee government cybersecurity efforts.

In his March 5 resignation letter, a copy of which was published by The Wall Street Journal, Beckstrom criticized the NSA's dominance of most of the nation's cybersecurity initiatives.

"While acknowledging the critical important of the NSA to our intelligence efforts, I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds," he wrote. "The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or security culture. In addition, the threats to our democratic processes are significant if all top-level government network security and monitoring are handled by one organization (either directly or indirectly)."

Beckstrom said he supports a model that allows for a civilian government cybersecurity capability operating in partnership with the NSA, but not controlled by it. He also made it clear that he was unhappy with the lack of funding at the NCSC, noting that the organization "received only five weeks of funding, due to various roadblocks engineered with the [Department of Homeland Security] and by the Office of Management and Budget."

U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-NY, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, Science, and Technology, expressed regret over Beckstrom's departure and blamed the Bush administration for hobbling Beckstrom's efforts by withholding funds.

"Mr. Beckstrom's departure is a huge loss for the department," Clarke said in an e-mailed statement. "If the last administration had provided him with the appropriate resources and staffing, he would have been extremely effective." Lawmakers in the House will hear testimony from various experts on Tuesday about the progress of the government's cybersecurity review, which should be completed next month.

Howard Schmidt, president and CEO of R&H Security Consulting and a security expert who has held positions at eBay, Microsoft, and various government posts, said Beckstrom's departure was not unexpected, given the typical shuffling of deck chairs that accompanies a new administration.

Perhaps as a result of his experience in the Air Force and with various government security and law enforcement agencies, Schmidt suggested that Beckstrom's criticism of the NSA was excessive. "If I was back in the government and I was looking for an agency as an organization to help protect my systems, I would be looking to the NSA," he said.

Schmidt supports the idea of a public-private partnership between the NSA and the organizations that own and operate much of the U.S. critical infrastructure. But he also said that in the context of government systems, the kind of secrecy that comes with NSA involvement may be appropriate. "The days of security by obscurity are long gone, but there are things not to be aired in public," he said.

Between the NSA and NIST, which oversees federal technology standards, there's a lot of good work being done for the public's benefit, said Schmidt. "We shouldn't be afraid of them."

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