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Small and medium-size U.S. companies should band together on cybersecurity systems as a way to pool limited resources against increasingly sophisticated attackers, the former director of the U.S. National Security Agency said Tuesday.

U.S. companies should explore ways to share more cyberthreat information with each other and work together to buy cybersecurity defenses as a service, said General Keith Alexander, who retired as director of the NSA and commander of cyber defense agency U.S. Cyber Command in April.

For smaller companies, I think were going to have to go to something like cybersecurity as a service, where they can opt in, Alexander said during a cybersecurity discussion in New York City hosted by PwC. If the small and mid-sized companies are grouped together, where its economically feasible to give them a great capability, then they arent the downstream problem for the large banks. In fact, they become a part of the sensing fabric that helps protect the big banks or big industries.

Many large U.S. businesses would probably continue to provide their own cybersecurity, but a shared cybersecurity service would hold major advantages for smaller businesses, said Alexander, who co-founded cybersecurity consulting firm IronNet Cybersecurity just weeks after retiring.

There are big companies that can afford big cybersecurity teams, have the funding to pay for them, he said. Then, if youre mid-sized, you can afford to have a mid-sized team or lesswell call that the economy team. If youre a small [business], you know what cybersecurity is, and wish you had some. You have ... an IT guy who went to a class at night.

Alexander, during his speech, largely sidestepped the NSAs surveillance of U.S. companies and its work to defeat encryption systems. Those NSA efforts came to light in the past 15 months through leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

He called on the U.S. Congress to pass controversial cyberthreat sharing legislation that would allow government agencies and private companies to more easily exchange information about attacks. Many privacy groups have protested the legislation, saying it would give government agencies, including the NSA, access to even more personal information held by private companies.

The cyberthreat information sharing bills in Congress have stalled this year because of privacy concerns.

We have to have a messaging framework and capability that shares information among sectors at network speed, Alexander said. Its technically feasible and something we should try for.

Alexander also suggested that too many companies rely on their chief information security officers (CISOs) or CTOs to keep up with the rapidly changing IT field and integrate what can be hundreds of IT products from dozens of vendors. One employee or small department cannot keep up with the changes and be expected to integrate all those products without exposing the company to cybersecurity risks, he said.

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Ex-NSA director Alexander calls for new cybersecurity model

Further Reading A set of newly declassified documents shows definitively and explicitly that the United States intelligence community relies heavily on what is effectively unchecked presidential authority to conduct surveillance operations, as manifested through the Reagan-era Executive Order (EO) 12333.

And at a more basic level, the new documentsillustrate that the government is adept at creating obscure legalistic definitions of plain language words, like "collection of information," which help obfuscate the publics understanding of the scope and scale of such a dragnet.

The documents were first published on Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) after the groupfiled aFreedom of Information Act lawsuit with the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School.

As Arsreported previously, "twelve triple three" is a presidential order that spells out the National Security Agencys authority to conduct signals intelligence, among other things. EO 12333 was amended three times under President George W.Bush. Famously, the NSAexpanded its domestic surveillance operation after the September 11 attacks without a direct order from the president, who later provided cover under EO 12333.

"These documents are a good first step to understanding how EO 12333 is being used," Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars. "We already know that it's used in a very similar manner to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is being used as part of collection techniques that collect wholly domestic (American) e-mail. We also know [EO 12333 is] used for the NSAs interception of Internet traffic between Google's and Yahoo!'s data centers abroad, the collection of millions of e-mail and instant message address books, the recording of the contents of every phone call made in at least two countries, and the mass cell phone location-tracking program. The NSAand the White Housemust release more material on EO 12333. The President has encouraged a public discussion on the NSA's signals intelligence activities. He must follow through with ensuring an open, and honest, debate on EO 12333 activities."

In a rare instance of clarity and precision, a "legal fact sheet" authored by the NSA and dated June 19, 2013 explains various elements of EO 12333.

FISA only regulates a subset of NSA's signals intelligence activities.

NSA conducts the majority of its SIGINT activities solely pursuant to the authority provided by Executive Order (EO) 12333.

Since 1981, EO 12333 has provided the President's authoritative written instruction for the organization and operation of the United States Intelligence Community (IC).

An internal training document for a course taught with the NSA entitled "Overview of Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) Authorities" notes that:

Link:
New docs show how Reagan-era executive order unbounded NSA

Ex-NSA Chief: Global instability worse than Americans know
General Michael Hayden lays out how to handle current conflicts overseas.

By: Fox News

Originally posted here:

Ex-NSA Chief: Global instability worse than Americans know - Video

Episode 58 CO Tax Hike; NSA Code in Android clip4

By: HUONG 01

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Episode 58 CO Tax Hike; NSA Code in Android clip4 - Video

By John Johnson

Newser

A customer holds his new iPhone 6 at an Apple Store in Augusta, Ga.(AP Photo/The Augusta Chronicle, Michael Holahan)

Apple says its latest iPhone has an encryption system that will keep users' emails and photos safe from the prying eyes of the NSA or any law-enforcement agency, reports the New York Times.

The company says its algorithm is so complex that if it ever had to turn over data from an iPhone 6, it would take the NSA about five years to decode it.

Even if Apple is underestimating the NSA's abilities, the principle isn't sitting well with FBI chief James Comey. What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to hold themselves beyond the law, he says.

Comey cited the example of a kidnapping in which parents come to him "with tears in their eyes" and say, "'What do you mean you can't?'" The Times report also quotes security officials who predict terrorists will quickly embrace such technology, along with a tech expert who says law-enforcement concerns are being exaggerated.

In an earlier piece on the encryption by Matthew Green at Slate, Green says Apple isn't picking a fight with the government. "Apple is not designing systems to prevent law enforcement from executing legitimate warrants," he writes.

"Its building systems that prevent everyone who might want your dataincluding hackers, malicious insiders, and even hostile foreign governmentsfrom accessing your phone." What's more, "Apple is setting a precedent that users, and not companies, should hold the keys to their own devices." Google has similar protection available for Android phones, though the encryption is not currently a default option.

That will change with new Androids out in October. (In other iPhone 6 news, Apple said last week it's received only nine complaints about phones bending.)

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NSA-proof iPhone 6?