WikiLeaks vs. CINDER

The Pentagon, responding to obvious flaws in its security revealed by the WikiLeaks debacle, is working on a data mining program that will monitor employee behavior for suspicious activity.

James Joyner

September 1, 2010

Comments

Wired‘s Spencer Ackerman reports on the Pentagon’s measures to fix obvious flaws in its security revealed by the Wikileaks debacle. Essentially, they’re working on a data mining program called Cyber Insider Threat, or CINDER, that will monitor employee behavior for suspicious activity.

As I note in my New Atlanticist essay “WikiLeak-Proofing The Pentagon,” this is the lesser of evils.

While these measures will produce more cost for the taxpayer and an even less comfortable workplace for those who toil in the national security business, they’re far preferable to what I presumed would be the natural bureaucratic action here: a return to massive stovepiping of information. Our enemies don’t have to steal our secrets, after all, if they’re safeguarded from people who have a legitimate need to know but can’t get it for fear that it’ll show up on some anarchist’s website.

Much more at the links.

USAF Photo.

2 responses to “WikiLeaks vs. CINDER”

Doug Mataconis

September 1, 2010 at 3:02 pm

This would seem to be both an advisable and logical response to the leak, although re-examining the extent to which information is stamped as “classified” or “secret” is probably in order as well
Ole Sarge

September 2, 2010 at 11:42 am

Nope this is not longer the age of WWMCCS with the high end crypto and the shielded hardwired connections, and near impossible to “break-in” or to copy and take out. Those old IBM and Burroughs/Unisys magnetic tapes are pretty heavy and hard to hide.
In the early to mid 1990s many of us “in the trenches” (Mid to Senior Tier NCOs and Mid Tier Officers) tried on multiple occasions to implement from “the cradle” security procedures that if they HAD been in widespread use THEN, would have at least made Specialist “Number 1 Wiki-leaks” task a little more difficult, and a little easier to have caught it THE FIRST TIME, he did a server dump.
Nope, the horses are out of the barn, NOW they decide that there should have been horse stalls with doors that shut, as well as closing the barn doors.