DHS slowly moving government's Internet traffic to secure networks

with two others close to completion. The remaining ninety-one departments will go through one of four major communications companies for the monitoring. So far just four to six agencies have put the program in place, he said.

In the end, all network traffic with flow through seventy-two sites called Trusted Internet Connections, including eight operated by the four communications companies and 64 operated by individual agencies.

A more sophisticated system known as Einstein 3, which will detect and automatically block intrusions, has just completed testing and will take several years to fully implement, Brown said.

Brown insisted that the government is not lagging behind private industry in its efforts to secure computer networks. He said each agency is responsible for setting up safe cybersecurity practices. Criminals these days “are more targeted, are more professional, and have greater sophistication and capabilities,” he said.

Einstein will add a valuable safeguard to government agencies but “there still is not a magic bullet” to defeat the increasingly sophisticated threats, said Jerry Dixon, former director at DHS’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team.

“We’re always playing catch-up or reacting to the last major cyberincident or event but not doing a lot to think about what the future might hold,” said

Dixon, who is now director of analysis at the Internet security firm Team Cymru.

AP reports that complicating the Einstein installation process is that federal agencies have offices and personnel strewn around the globe, from post offices to nuclear labs and national parks. They can be small outposts with a handful of workers or huge complexes employing thousands, and they are operating under many contracts with different Internet vendors.

Baker said legal questions bog down the process. There are concerns that the monitoring programs could violate privacy safeguards for federal workers, members of the public who communicate with them, or other individuals whose e-mail might accidentally get caught in the system.

“The search for legal certainty and legal guarantees may be part of the problem,” he said.

U.S. officials and security experts have warned that government networks are persistently scanned and attacked millions of times a day. The recent discovery of the Stuxnet worm, which experts say appeared to target Iranian nuclear plants, stunned and worried U.S. officials, who said it could be modified to wreak havoc on industrial control systems around the world.

Those systems control vital facilities like the electric grid, water plants, traffic systems and industries that produce everything from deadly chemicals to baby formula.