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Businesses team to thwart terror(Denver Post, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Feb. 23--The kind of open access that allowed children and adults to pet animals at the 100th National Western Stock Show & Rodeo last month presents myriad national-security issues. "If you were a terrorist trying to impact the food supply, an event like the stock show is wonderful to infect," said David McGuire, a board member of the Colorado-Wyoming alliance of a group called InfraGard. "There was a lot of security at the stock show; it was all behind the scenes." The local InfraGard group, which is based in Denver, consists of 450 members from a wide range of businesses. For the past five years, they have met with the local division of the FBI to discuss ways to counter threats, including threats to the food supply. No problems were reported at the stock show. The program sprang from the FBI's Cleveland field office in 1996 as a way to involve private industry in thwarting computer- network intrusions. Dave Mahon, supervisory special agent for the FBI cyber- crime division, said the FBI has a national-security mission to see if a company has been hacked by a foreign government or terrorist. He said the FBI does not request information from corporations about employees or clients. "The approach by the FBI is to provide a public service to educate leaders to the severity of issues that are involved if their network is hacked by a foreign government or even former employee," he said. Many members of InfraGard are computer-security experts for different companies. Over time, InfraGard expanded its mission to safeguarding 13 of the nation's most critical areas, including agriculture, banking, chemicals, energy and telecommunications, through members sharing information about the best ways to secure their businesses. There are about 82 chapters of InfraGard in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Sixty-eight of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500 have an InfraGard representative, according to the group's website. Xcel Energy joined InfraGard after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Allan Wick, security manager for Xcel, sits on InfraGard's board of directors. "We find it advantageous because it provides us direct access to the FBI and others with critical infrastructure, which in turn has led to better two-way communication," said Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz. "If some (incident) is not easily explained, we're more likely to use contacts from InfraGard than we would have 10 years ago." Qwest is also an InfraGard member. InfraGard is scheduled to hold a meeting about protecting the region's agriculture supply today. John Picanso, chief information officer for the state, will discuss technology advances that can help protect the food supply. A new computing practice, known as grid or "utility computing," can quickly identify where an infected cow is and other cattle it has come in contact with. The technology is being tested at Colorado State University. Rick Dakin, president and senior security strategist for Louisville-based Coalfire Systems Inc., will receive the FBI Director's Community Leadership Award. Dakin is a past president of the InfraGard member alliance. "There are those that go to learn and those that go to contribute to better community preparedness," he said. "We get a large following of people just feeding off one another to put controls and protections into place." |