The General Accounting Office (GAO) has found that the FBI division charged with security alerting, National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), is understaffed and cannot fulfil its mission in a timely manner.
GAO released a report stating, "While some warnings were issued in time to avert damage, most of the warnings, especially those related to viruses, pertained to attacks underway."
Despite its $27 million budget, NIPC has only a little more than 50% of the staff it needs in order to put out security alerts.
This means that reports are often issued after attacks are well underway.
Key posts are left unfilled because qualified security experts shy away from the roles. It took 18 months to fill the 'chief of analysis and warning' post following the unit's inception in 1998.
NIPC director Ronald Dick has responded to the report by highlighting the lack of support received from other Government agenciesparticularly the Department of Defense and the Treasury -as well as the business community's lack of openness in sharing threat information with the FBI.
Dick said, "It is most important that the NIPC receive more adequate staffing, particularly from the defence and intelligence communities, in order to remedy the principal shortcoming identified by the GAO -the lack of strategic analysis."
Dick is positive about the progress of the organization. "It is a startup organization less than three years old, which has accomplished admirable results despite the fact that it began with no dedicated source of funding and no ready group of personnel to staff it."
The GAO report was commissioned following the outbreak of the LoveLetter virus in May 2000 which damaged many computers before NIPC was able to react.
The GAO report is at www.gao.gov. It is number