(Reuters) The National Security Agency, hit by disclosures of classified data by former contractor Edward Snowden, said Thursday it intends to eliminate about 90 percent of its system administrators to reduce the number of people with access to secret information.
Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, the U.S. spy agency charged with monitoring foreign electronic communications, told a cybersecurity conference in New York City that automating much of the work would improve security.
"What we're in the process of doing - not fast enough - is reducing our system administrators by about 90 percent," he said.
The remarks came as the agency is facing scrutiny after Snowden, who had been one of about 1,000 system administrators who help run the agency's networks, leaked classified details about surveillance programs to the press.
Before the change, "what we've done is we've put people in the loop of transferring data, securing networks and doing things that machines are probably better at doing," Alexander said.
Using technology to automate much of the work now done by employees and contractors would make the NSA's networks "more defensible and more secure," as well as faster, he said at the conference, in which he did not mention Snowden by name.
These efforts pre-date Snowden's leaks, the agency has said, but have since been accelerated.
Alexander's remarks largely echoed similar comments made to Congress and at other public appearances over the past two months since his agency came under fire from civil liberties advocates and lawmakers concerned by Snowden's revelations.
Snowden leaked documents to the Guardian and the Washington Post, which published stories revealing previously secret telephone and internet surveillance programs run by the U.S. government.
Read full article here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment