Ridge Issues Security Challenge

Tom Ridge, the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), called on the storage industry today to help the government win its war on terror.

Ridge, keynoting at the Infosecurity show in New York, underlined the importance of corporate America as the government wrestles with new technologies. "You can't secure the country from inside the Beltway," he said. "The intellectual critical mass for cyber-security rests in the private sector."

Storage, in particular, is an area where the government is facing new challenges, he told Byte and Switch. "There will be more and more data collected," he said, adding that there are still issues to be resolved around the collection, storage, and security of personal data.

During his keynote, Ridge explained that officials are constantly looking at new technologies to secure America's borders and avoid a repeat of 9/11. These range from unmanned aerial vehicles on the border with Mexico to new x-ray systems for checking the contents of shipping containers.

Although Congress has pumped money into homeland security since 9/11, Ridge's comments suggest that storage still needs to be locked down. Earlier this year, analyst firm Input Inc. warned that weaknesses in VPN connections, faulty firewalls, and a lack of customized security products are opening up the government's back-end systems to potential fraud, sabotage, and even destruction. (See Report: Feds Need Security.)Ridge, a former Governor of Pennsylvania, also used his speech to underline his support for the controversial use of biometrics. "It's my belief that the proper use of biometric scanning protects privacy," he said.

Biometric scanning is already in place in airports across the U.S., although Ridge urged vendors to think about how different airport security systems work together. "We need to integrate the technologies," he said. "Nobody is going to buy these individual systems."

This is not the first time that the public sector has issued a rallying call to the storage industry. At the recent Storage Networking World conference, Lt. Colonel Karlton Johnson -- a U.S Air Force technology guru and member of the Army War college -- challenged vendors to get on board with the miltary's complex storage needs. (See USAF Issues Storage Challenge.)

But the cyber-security relationship between the IT industry and Washington has not been without its tensions. Corporate chiefs, for example, placed great pressure on the feds to create an Assistant Secretary for Cyber Security role in the DHS. (See CSIA Calls for Assistant Secretary, CSIA Praises DHS and DHS Secretary Announces 6-Pt Agenda.)

Overall, 2006 is shaping up to be a milestone year for Government IT awards. Storage and managed security services, for instance, have been solicited by the U.S. General Services Administration as part of its Networx Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC). DHS officials are also expected to award a number of lucrative contracts next year. (See Government Contracts Tempt Suppliers, Input: US Govt to Award $250B IT Deals and Washington Cranks Up Contracts.)Initial signs suggest that the DHS will remain a storage cash cow well beyond 2006, with Ridge warning Infosecurity attendees not to expect a quick victory in the war on terror. "It's something that we will have to deal with, and the civilized world will have to deal with, for a generation or two," he said.

James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch

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