Cyber attacks here to stay, Michael Chertoff says

• Chase

NEWARK – Last year was a busy year for hackers. Just ask anyone who lost personal information or had their credit card number stolen because of intrusions at Target, Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase, eBay and other companies.

Don’t look for a turnaround anytime soon, the former head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security says. Such attacks are here to stay.

“This is everywhere,” Michael Chertoff told an overflow audience Tuesday at the University of Delaware. “It’s not concentrated only on business enterprises or particular locations, or in a particular type of activity. In current personal systems within our homes, within our offices, within our academic institutions, this is the new normal, and these security episodes will continue to be part of our everyday life.”

But there’s good news, said Chertoff, guest speaker for the inaugural distinguished lecture of UD’s nearly year-old Cybersecurity Initiative. He sees an increased sense of urgency to share findings and solutions among operators of critical infrastructure in both industry and government – the very people whose collaboration, he said, is vital.

“Government is doing more things,” Chertoff said, pointing to the Obama administration’s Tuesday announcement that it will form a new agency, akin to the National Counterterrorism Center, that will employ an “integrated, all-tools” approach to combat cyber attacks. “But it can’t be government alone.”

Besides, he added, “we do not have a society, nor do we want one, in which the government sits on everybody’s network and watches what goes on inside it. And that’s where those who legitimately own the networks have to take on that responsibility and have a mechanism for sharing with the government.”

Delaware is an ideal locale to hatch the sort of cross-pollination of solutions that Chertoff said the best computer network security demands. It’s roughly halfway between the nation’s capital and Wall Street, he said. It’s the corporate home of many of the world’s largest companies – and to what is considered the leading business court in the nation.

And “academia ... needs to be part of that partnership,” he said. UD, Delaware State University and Delaware Technical Community College are the Cybersecurity Initiative’s academic partners in the First State.

Hacker attacks are rising sharply. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ just-published survey of more than 9,700 corporate executives and security directors from across the globe, the total number of security incidents detected last year increased 48 percent over 2013.

While denial of service and the theft of personal and financial information are major concerns, Chertoff said he worries most about “corruptive or destructive” types of attacks. These could range from an extended, subtle intrusion into multiple financial institutions that could create a change in bank rates and a “crisis in confidence” in banks, to deadlier outcomes, spelled out in a report issued Monday by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., which found that nearly every modern car or light truck can be hacked and remotely controlled.

“No enterprise is immune,” Chertoff said. “If we’re going to attempt to minimize and negate the risk of cyber attacks, we have to work as a team.”

“I think he’s right,” said William Leigher, advanced solutions director for Raytheon and one of those in attendance. “The environment’s changing pretty quickly. And it’s got to continue to evolve to get the kind of cyber defenses that we need.”

Contact William H. McMichael at (302) 324-2812 or bmcmichael@delawareonline.com. On Twitter: @billmcmichael