Continued from Page 1.

One example Chertoff noted was last year's cyber attack on Estonia, which virtually crippled that country's computer systems for weeks.

He said the Estonian government's computers were inundated with over 2,000 visits per second as part of the botnet (define) attack.

"There were more than a million computers involved in that attack," he added.

Determined attackers

The U.S. government worked with Estonia to repair the damage and better secure its systems, Chertoff said.

"But it's an example of what determined terrorists or others can do," he said. "Imagine if a sophisticated attack paralyzed our financial system ... or our air traffic system? It's easy to see such an attack would have very real-world consequences."

In addition to appealing for greater corporate support in combating such threats, Chertoff pointed to ways in which the government is doing its own share of safeguarding the country's information infrastructure.

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In particular, he singled out President Bush's January signing of a National Cyber Security initiative -- describing it as a needed "quantum leap" in how the nation can address online threats.

He compared the effort behind that bill to the Manhattan Project that led to the development of the atomic bomb.

Specifically, the National Cyber Security initiative aims to have the DHS and other departments developing and deploying technologies that will protect Internet domains and secure the reliability and security of the nation's network infrastructure.

For instance, Chertoff said the new initiative would close thousands of access points into federal Internet domains, helping government agencies better manage and identify threats by reducing them to about 50.

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Organizational considerations are also heavily influencing DHS's efforts. Chertoff said that because a reactive, command-and-control system is not adequate to deal with today's attacks, his department is working to develop a flatter, more distributed system to identify and mitigate threats.

"It takes a network to beat a network," he said.

For security reasons, Chertoff declined to detail specific technologies or the scope of DHS's efforts. But he did discuss a system, called "Einstein", that records and analyzes Internet traffic.

"Ideally, our vision is to work with others, including intelligence agencies, to look more deeply at the Internet and what might be launched before it comes."

Despite those efforts, Chertoff emphasized that the government's role remains limited.

In the case of individuals, he said Internet users can help by availing themselves of the latest commercial security solutions.

"I think our role in preparedness is to give people the information they can use to protect themselves," Chertoff said. "It's not to sit on individual people's computers. There are hundreds of reasons we don't want to do that."

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