US national cyber security chief resigns over turf battle

09 March 2009

In a move that highlights differences over who should be in charge of national cybersecurity efforts in the US, the director of a federal office set up to protect civilian, military and intelligence networks has submitted his resignation after less than a year in the job.

Rod Beckstrom's decision to step down as director of the National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC) comes as the White House is conducting a broad 60-day review of how well the government is using technology to protect everything from classified national security data to key financial systems and air traffic control. (See: US cyber security ineffective: commission)

The NCSC is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and it was just last year that Beckstrom was named to his post, an odd choice since his experience was in management, not security.

In a sharply worded letter to current DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, Beckstrom on Friday noted that the NSA effectively controlled DHS cyber efforts "through detailees, technology insertions" and a proposed move of the National Protection and Programs Directorate and the NCSC to an NSA facility in Fort Meade. His letter, dated 5 March, noted that allowing the NSA to control national cybersecurity efforts is a "bad strategy on multiple grounds."

The intelligence culture embodied by the NSA is "very different than a network operations or security culture," said Beckstrom in the letter. Allowing a single agency such as the NSA to handle all top-level government network security and monitoring functions poses a significant threat to "our democratic processes," he said. "Instead, we advocated a model where there is a credible civilian government cybersecurity capability which interfaces with, but is not controlled by, the NSA."

Beckstrom also lamented the lack of "appropriate" support for his office within the DHS during the Bush administration. He noted that over the past year, his office had received just five weeks' worth of funding because of various roadblocks engineered within the DHS and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The DHS issued a terse statement, ''We thank Rod for his service, and regret his departure,'' without giving a reason for his departure, and adding, ''The Department of Homeland Security has a strong relationship with the NSA, and continues to work in close collaboration with all of our federal partners on protecting federal civilian networks.''