ORLANDO, Fla. -- A reinforced cadre of federal cybercrime prosecutors and technicians at the third annual GFirst conference marshaled new deterrents and defenses against the rising level of cyberattacks, as industry executives forecast increases in the market for security products.
More than 550 people from about 70 organizations attended the conference, including dozens from the Justice Department’s Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Coordinators’ Conference. The CHIPS attendees convened several closed meetings to discuss investigative and legal strategies against cybercrime.
CHIPS has grown from five prosecutors in 1991 to more than 240 DOJ attorneys, including two prosecutors in each regional office and a headquarters team in Washington, officials said. CHIPS members provide technical and legal support to other prosecutors and Justice officials.
Greg Garcia, the Homeland Security Department’s assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications, said his organization had received more than 21,000 reports of cyber incidents through May during this fiscal year, in contrast to about 24,000 during all of 2006.
“Phishing attacks accounted for about 72 percent of complaints in the most recent quarter,” Garcia said in his opening remarks.
He highlighted the importance of the sector-specific infrastructure protection plans that DHS released in May. Adding operational content to those plans is a major department goal for the rest of this year and beyond, he added.
DHS worked with infrastructure-sector teams known as Information Sharing and Analysis Councils (ISACs) to frame the plans.
Speaking during a subsequent panel alongside leaders of the Information Technology and Communications ISACs, Garcia said he and his industry peers would work during the coming months to combine operational functions of the two industry groups.
“Increasingly we are finding that IT and communications are one and the same,” Garcia said.
“We are working with the IT ISAC [and its communications counterpart] to co-locate them under one roof to increase the level of integration and situational awareness,” Garcia said. “This is a longer-term objective of mine and one we are getting started on right now.”
The IT ISAC recently convened the first meeting of a horizontal national computer infrastructure working group that attracted participation from representatives of several other infrastructure sectors, said Guy Copeland, president of the IT ISAC.
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