Can the US CIA Fight Cyber Terrorism Alone?

Featuring heavily are gadgets such as early secret cameras and bugging devices that would not appear out of character in a Hollywood film. The line-up makes the point that even though the CIA is an intelligence agency whose central mission has been to recruit people to provide secrets, technology has always had a crucial role. Andrew Hallman - who runs the recently created Directorate of Digital Innovation - has the job of making sure that the new digital world works to the CIA's advantage rather than disadvantage. A major focus of Mr Hallman's effort is to use data to provide insights into future crises - developing what has been called "anticipatory intelligence". This means looking for ways in which technology can provide early warning of, say, unrest in a country. "I think that's a big growth area for the intelligence community and one the Directorate of Digital Innovation is trying to promote," Mr Hallman says. The volume and variety of data produced around the world has grown exponentially in recent years - a process about to accelerate as more and more items as well as people are connected up in the so-called internet of things. Developing expertise in open-source (publicly available) information is another priority - in the past this was something of a sideshow at an agency that focused on "secrets" - but such information can often help focus on what really is secret and what can be obtained by other means, especially as the definition of open source expands rapidly from the past, when it largely meant foreign news and media.This writer believes that cyber terrorism can only be defeated by a strong partnership between the government and private sector. Share your thoughts with the Cloud and Cyber Security Center.