FBI Tries To Protect IT Systems From Intrusions

The FBI is set to launch a national rollout of InfraGard, apartnership of businesses, the bureau, and its NationalInfrastructure Protection Center. The alliance is designedto protect IT systems from hacker attacks and otherintrusions by providing a network for sharing informationabout attacks and how to thwart them.

InfraGard, which the FBI began as a pilot program inCleveland in 1997, will initially be expanded to at least 15major cities around the country -- including Atlanta,Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, NewYork, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington -- saysVan Harp, the FBI's special agent in charge of the Clevelanddivision. Harp says representatives from the FBI's 15largest field offices recently met to discuss the expansion.He gave no specific timetable for the effort. InfraGard wasformed as part of the federal government's effort to protectthe nation's critical information systems. It's designed toultimately serve as a national clearinghouse of informationabout security intrusions and vulnerabilities, and to offertools to help detect and prevent attacks.

Members are linked to each other and to the FBI by thebureau's secure "alert network," so companies canimmediately and anonymously report incidents to governmentauthorities and other members. The FBI provides encryptionsoftware developed by AT&T to protect information exchangeamong members. The National Infrastructure Protection Centerwill use data gathered from different InfraGard chapters tocompile reports on nationwide security trends. The networkwill be expanded as the organization grows, Harp says. TheFBI hopes the InfraGard program, which has already led toseveral computer-security criminal investigations, will leadto more reports of intrusions, he adds.