Clinton pushes security
In memo, the president urges federal agencies to protect themselves against cyberattacks
President Clinton on Friday reiterated his plea to agencies to protect their
information systems against cyberattacks like the ones that shut down several
popular Internet commerce sites last month.
In a memo, Clinton said White House Chief of Staff John Podesta will coordinate
a governmentwide review of agency actions and vulnerabilities, and report
the findings to Clinton by April 1.
Clinton also highlighted the work administration officials have done during
the past month with industry to secure private-sector systems against the
denial-of-service attacks that shut down Yahoo, eBay and several other sites,
and emphasized that the government must do the same for its own systems.
He said agencies should work with the Federal Computer Incident Response
Center and the National Infrastructure Protection Center to install protective
tools and patches.
Agencies should also, "within legal and administrative limits," look at
the security measures being taken by the contractors providing services
to their agency, Clinton said.
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