In the wake of the information hack at the Office of Personnel Management last week, the United States Coast Guard has been internally increasing cyber security measures as well as aiding private sector companies to protect maritime commerce.
Adm. Paul Zukunft, Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, has spoken to maritime companies and policy groups to show the Coast Guard's cyber progress and to raise awareness of safe cyber practices to protect private companies.
"When I look at developing a cyber strategy, I look at it from a private sector and a public sector perspective," Zukunft said Tuesday in a forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It begins with defending your cyber space. Our weakest link in all of this is our human resource capital, and an individual's cyber hygiene."
Last week, Zukunft met with port authorities in New Jersey and New York urging their employees to secure their private networks to ensure no information leaks.
Companies have a personal incentive to communicate with the Coast Guard's cyber units to secure their financial security, and then also notify them of, perhaps, a broader attack.
"If there is a hole in the fence and someone sneaks into a private facility, a report is filled and the Coast Guard is notified of a security breach," Zukunft said. "The reason why is that if there is more than one of these events, it may be part of a coordinated attack. So this is what we have to come to grips with now—this is the invisible intrusion."
The Coast Guard has noted these inherent national security risks and has created units to combat cyber terrorism.
"We operate in a lot of domains and we’ve operated in the sea since 1790. We’ve evolved since 1790, but we never addressed how we operate in this new cyber domain."
The U.S. Coast Guard has established a cyber command unit since Zukunft was installed as commandant last year. The 70-man team monitors the branch’s cyber security and also serves as a point of contact for maritime organizations in the case of a security breach.