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NATO Awards Largest Cyber-Security Contract To Date
Sara Chan writes "NATO has awarded its largest cyber-security contract to date, in a move that is expected to prompt member states to augment their own cyber-security capabilities. The contract, for €58 million ($76 million), is to design and implement NATO's Computer Incident Response Capability. NCIRC will enable NATO to monitor computer networks from its headquarters in Brussels and detect and respond to cyber threats and vulnerabilities at about 50 NATO sites in 28 countries. The project is intended to meet the requirements of a declaration by NATO Head of States at the Lisbon Summit, in November 2010, which called for the achievement of NCIRC Full Operational Capability by end of 2012."
What do you want to bet most of the hardware the UN purchases will be manufactured behind the Iron Firewall?
I'll bet I don't think this is a good idea...
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
So, who gets to decide exactly *what* constitutes a "CyberThread"?
The CyberThreat Czar of course. For a country founded in part of ridding itself of a monarchy, the United States of Amerika seems Hell bent on establishing its own monarchy given all the czars named over the past twenty years. May I be Czar of Sarcasm, please?
NATO is a military alliance between a subset of UN members - it would exist as long as the member states found it useful to exist, would it not?
Emotions! In your brain!
>> If you have a system that must not be compromised, then don't connect it to the fucking Internet.
Those are called secret or top secret network and they are removed from the Internet either logically, by inline encrypters, or physically separate networks. At some point you have to be on a network connected to the Internet if you want to communicate with people outside of NATO, though. How else would I deal with contractors, state departments or national military users?
We can argue that €58 million is too high and I'd probably agree, but in the end, NATO still has a network that needs security measures applied to it.
Do you propose NATO sets up a network with no security? If €58 million is too high, what would you have bid on it?
How much would you have bid, AC? Make sure you follow the bidding instructions and show how you can deliver for an order of magnitude less.
If anyone is curious (I was), the successful bidders were Finmeccanica through SELEX Elsag and VEGA (based in the United Kingdom) together with its partner Northrup Grumman Corporation team. So it looks like that involves Italy, the UK, and the US: http://www.defpro.com/news/details/33224/?SID=45a71f6bf4374255010ce6a71de99974
We don't know it's a bullshit contract until we have the name of the contractor to research some background (please include those details in the summary in future). I'm admitting that I haven't RTFA, but as soon as I read headlines like these I want to research the contractor.
I am the story submitter. The contractors are Finmeccanica and Northrop Grumman. Some research background is given in the last link in the summary.