US Creates Cyber-CIA to Fight Hackers

The last year saw high-profile hacks into Sony Pictures, which set off a firestorm of controversy surrounding their film “The Interview.” But other security breaches, like cyberattacks on Home Depot, Target, and even the social media accounts of US Central Command, made President Obama to prioritize cybersecurity.

Called the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC), the new agency will be an “intelligence center that will ‘connect the dots’ between various cyber threats to the nation so that relevant departments and agencies are aware of these threats in as close to real time as possible,” according to an unnamed Obama administration official who spoke to Washington Post. Profiling hacker groups, gathering their digital “signatures” and sharing threat information with law enforcement and intelligence agencies will be the main task of the new center.

Right now, cybersecurity is managed by a hodgepodge network consisting of the National Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and CIA, but a lack of coordination between these departments is a critical weakness in US intelligence. The CTIIC will, theoretically, serve to pool all of this cybersecurity information in one place. Following 9/11, the Bush administration created the National Counterterrorism Center to establish better communication between various US intelligence agencies. The CTIIC would work in a similar way.

(read more)