Analyists work at
the National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) in Arlington, Virginia,
in 2010. Sluggish moves to counter the rising threat of cyber-attacks can be
blamed on a generation of policymakers out of touch with rapid technological
change, a senior US
official said Monday.
Sluggish moves to
counter the rising threat of cyber-attacks can be blamed on a generation of
policymakers out of touch with rapid technological change, a senior US official
said Monday.
"The truth is
there are a lot of senior officials in many countries who barely even know how
to use an email," Rose Gottemoeller, US acting under-secretary for arms
control and international security, said during a visit to Estonia.
"The change
will come with the new generation," she told the audience at a lecture
delivered at the Estonian IT College, in the Baltic state's capital Tallinn.
Estonia is one of the
world's most wired nations, and its high-tech savvy has earned it the nickname
"E-Stonia".
Home to NATO's
cyber-defence centre, founded in 2008, the nation of 1.3 million has been at
the forefront of efforts to preempt cyber-attacks.
Estonia has bitter
experience in the field.
A politically
charged dispute with its Soviet-era master Moscow in 2007 was marked by a blistering cyber-attack blamed on Russian hackers -- though the
Kremlin denied any involvement.
Gottemoeller also
said governments should consider incorporating open-source IT and social networking into arms control
verification and monitoring.
"In order to
pursue the goal of a world free from nuclear weapons, we are going to
have to think bigger and bolder," she explained.
"New concepts
are not invented overnight, and we don't understand the full range of
possibilities inherent in the information age, but we would be
remiss if we did not start thinking about whether new technologies can augment
over half a century of arms control negotiating expertise," she added.
(c) 2012 AFP
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