Einstein 3, a government-developed intrusion prevention system and the consolidation of civilian federal agencies external access points are just some of the details in the multi-billion dollar Comprehensive National
Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) that were recently declassified by the Obama administration. According to Computer World, The administration’s decision to declassify portions of the 12-point program was announced at the RSA Security Conference by Howard Schmidt, recently appointed as White House
cyber security advisor.
“Under the effort, more than 4,300 external connections are being consolidated, to about 100. The consolidated network will then be monitored by an upgraded version of a federal network intrusion detection technology called Einstein.
“The new version of Einstein, called Einstein 2 will use signature-based sensors to inspect all Internet traffic entering Federal systems for malicious content.
“The document released today reveals that in addition to Einstein 2, the government is also developing Einstein 3, a network intrusion prevention system based on technology developed at the National Security Agency. The Department of Homeland Security is currently piloting the technology, which will be used by the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) to respond to network intrusions.”
