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NS/EP communications enable the Government to make an immediate and coordinated response to all emergencies, whether caused by a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, an act of domestic terrorism, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the September 11th attacks, a man-made disaster, or a cyber attack. NS/EP communications allow the President and other senior Administration officials to be continually accessible, even under stressed conditions.
The impact of today’s dynamic technological and regulatory environment is profound: new technologies and the increasingly competitive marketplace combine to bring both new opportunities and new vulnerabilities to the information infrastructure. The NSTAC is strongly positioned to offer advice to the President on how to: (1) leverage this dynamic environment to enrich NS/EP communications capabilities and ensure that new architectures fulfill requirements to support NS/EP operations; and (2) avoid introducing vulnerabilities into the information infrastructure that could adversely affect NS/EP communications services. For almost two decades, industry chief executives from communications and information technology companies have offered their expertise to give the President NSTAC's independent, private sector, non-partisan, provider-based perspective. By virtue of its mandate to address NS/EP communications issues, the NSTAC's partnership with Government through the National Communications System (NCS) is unique in two ways—direct industry involvement with both the defense agencies and the civil agencies comprising the NCS; and regular, sustained interaction between industry and the NCS member departments and agencies through the National Coordinating Center for Telecommunications (NCC), the NCC Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC), and the Network Security Information Exchange (NSIE) process. The NSTAC's perspective and its experiences with a broad range of Federal departments and agencies make the NSTAC a key strategic resource for the President and his national security team in their efforts to protect our Nation's critical infrastructures in today's dynamic environment. The NSTAC’s current work plan includes initiatives that intersect with several programs set forth in the National Plan for Information Systems Protection, i.e., information sharing, the security and reliability of converged networks, and research and development (R&D) issues related to converged networks.
Thirty years ago, NS/EP communications services were provided by a communications infrastructure based on a discrete, monolithic, domestic, terrestrial, circuit-switched voice network, supported primarily by mechanical controls. Today's communications infrastructure is composed of interdependent, diverse, circuit and packet switched networks using terrestrial, satellite, and wireless transmissions systems to support voice, data, image, and video communications, supported primarily by software-based controls. Globalization introduces another element of diversity and interdependence, as domestic service providers establish joint ventures, or merge, with foreign service providers. Communications networks and information systems have inextricably converged into an information infrastructure in which neither communications nor information processing can fully function without the other. This growth and convergence have offered capabilities and applications that have profoundly changed how both the public and private sectors conduct business, increasing their dependence on the technologies comprising the information infrastructure. Although it is critical to the Government, the information infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector. Consequently, Government is unable to fully address NS/EP communications issues associated with the information infrastructure without a Government-industry partnership, such as that offered by NSTAC. As the strategic and technological environments have changed, NSTAC's work has kept pace with these changes and has evolved from an initial emphasis on NS/EP communications to a broader scope that encompasses the information infrastructure. Today NSTAC offers advice to the President on policy issues affecting not only the Government's ability to leverage the information infrastructure to better support NS/EP operations but also the Government's ability to protect the information infrastructure itself from threats and vulnerabilities that might ultimately jeopardize the country's national and economic security. The NSTAC has addressed numerous issues in the past 18 years. Three accomplishments best illustrate NSTAC's capabilities to address NS/EP communications issues in today's environment: the establishment of the NCC and its ISAC; the implementation of the Government and NSTAC NSIE process; and the examination of the NS/EP implications of Internet technologies and the vulnerabilities of converged networks. These accomplishments are briefly described below.
The NCC was established in 1984 as a result of an NSTAC recommendation to develop a joint government-industry national coordinating mechanism to respond to the Federal Government's NS/EP communications service requirements. The NCC's mission is to assist in the initiation, coordination, restoration and reconstitution of NS/EP communications services or facilities. Currently 13 NSTAC member companies are represented in the NCC. The NSTAC was instrumental in expanding the NCC's responsibilities to include functioning as an ISAC for the telecommunications infrastructure. Established in January 2000, the NCC-ISAC was the second ISAC to be formed following the promulgation of Presidential Decision Directive 63 (PDD-63) and the first ISAC with both industry and Government membership. The NCC-ISAC gathers information about vulnerabilities, threats, intrusions, and anomalies from telecommunications industry, Government, and other sources, and then analyzes the data with the goal of averting or mitigating effects on the communications infrastructure. Results are sanitized and disseminated in accordance with sharing agreements established by the NCC-ISAC participants.
In 1991, the NSTAC, working with the NCS, recommended establishing a Government-industry partnership to reduce the vulnerability of the Nation's telecommunications systems to electronic intrusion. The National Security Information Exchange (NSIE) process was established as a forum in which Government and industry could share information in a trusted and confidential environment. The NSIE process continues to function today, demonstrating that industry and Government will share sensitive security information if they find value in doing so. In 1998, PDD-63 called for the establishment of similar information exchange forums to reduce vulnerabilities in all critical infrastructures.
In 1999, the NSTAC identified the need for the Government to consider how the convergence of traditional circuit switched telecommunications systems with the Internet might affect the Government's existing priority communications systems. The NSTAC also recommended that the Government determine how it could obtain priority services in the next generation packet-based networks. The NSTAC's past accomplishments demonstrate the value of its advice on protecting and enhancing the Nation's NS/EP communications infrastructure.
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