Page 23 - Cyber Warnings

PROTECTING AMERICA’S NATIONAL TREASURE: THE INTERNET

By Gary S. Miliefsky

After tracking cyber terrorists, cyber criminals, hackers and malware for the past two decades, it
seems that we’ve come to an impasse where we need to take a dramatic turn for the better, to
protect one of our most undervalued national treasures – the Internet.

Short History Lesson On the Internet

Historically, the Internet started out as DARPANET (or DARPANet). The Advanced Research
Projects Agency (ARPA), the original developers of the early packet-switched network that came
to be called the ARPANET, was renamed the (U.S.) Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) in 1971. For this reason, it is often assumed that the ARPANET was then called
the DARPANET.

Over time, it expanded into Universities, connections grew, routing protocols were agreed upon,
RFCs (request for comments) were shared until SMTP (used for email), FTP (used for file transfer)
and other protocols arrived – then along came HTTP – the world wide web protocol and now,
everyone is ‘on’ the Internet.

Today, it has literally transformed the way we communicate, the way governments interact and
how we use everything from our cell phones to our home alarm systems and baby monitors. It has
also become part of the control fabric used in power grids, airline scheduling systems, train
schedules and so much more of our critical infrastructure, yet it was not designed to provide any
means of security for these environments.

Billions have been spent on Firewalls and Antivirus – both reactive technologies to combat attacks,
yet at every turn, they fail us with major breaches in the news on a weekly basis. Just look at
PrivacyRights.org and you’ll see with nearly 900,000,000 records breached as of the day of this
writing, in the US alone, we are on a completely insecure and weak Internet.

In fact, it’s so fragile and so under attack, just see http://map.ipviking.com to see current attacks
happening today, all across the Internet, that I thought it time to offer up a public proposal for all
those in the US Government and the commercial sector, especially in the Cyberspace industry
who will listen to common sense and take action, to the betterment of America’s cybersecurity.
America’s right to free speech, from the First Amendment, is clear.

The Internet (aka Cyberspace) has become an incredible vehicle for the exploration of these
rights. It has become the future of commerce and will continue to shape technology, social
behavior, business, research and so much more.

23 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – January 2016 Edition
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