In the midst of an ongoing turf battle over how big a role the National Security Agency should play in securing the nation’s critical infrastructure, a Defense Department official asserted on Wednesday that the military’s controversial intelligence agency should take a backseat to the Department of Homeland Security in this regard.
“Obviously, there are amazing resources at NSA, a lot of magic that goes on there,” said Eric Rosenbach, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy in the Department of Defense. “But it’s almost certainly not the right approach for the United States of America to have a foreign intelligence focus on domestic networks, doing something that throughout history has been a domestic function.”
Rosenbach, who was speaking at the RSA Security conference in San Francisco, was adamant that the DHS, a civilian agency, should take the lead for domestic cybersecurity, with the FBI taking a strong role as the country’s domestic law enforcement agency.
“But that doesn’t mean that DoD and NSA don’t play in the game,” he said. “We’re more the supporting effort.”
Current and former Defense Department officials have been asserting in the last several years that the NSA should have a more leading role, and specifically should be allowed to monitor network traffic to detect and thwart malicious attacks before they occur. In addition to its role in spying on other governments and threats to the U.S., the NSA has responsibility for securing the government’s classified networks, and its defensive skills are highly regarded in the security community.
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