Information sharing at the NSA (video)

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Author: Joe Barr

The topic of information sharing among US intelligence agencies, the FBI, and other federal agencies has attracted attention since 9/11. At Defcon XV, I had the opportunity to ask Tony Sager, chief of the National Security Agency’s Vulnerability Analysis and Operations Group, about information sharing within the agency.

All intelligence agencies are highly compartmentalized. You can spend a career without ever knowing the details of what others around you are doing. Since the NSA has a dual mission — intelligence gathering on one side of the house and ensuring information security on the other — I was curious about whether the two sides of the agency are able to share data today, so that exploits and vulnerabilities discovered while breaking into the Taliban’s secret computer network can be used to beef up security on our own networks, and vice versa.

Category:

  • Security