Known as `Perfect Citizen' the program will reportedly operate under the auspices of the National Security Agency and will use sensors installed on the critical national systems requiring protection.

Infosecurity notes that many of these systems and networks are already defending using SCADA – supervisory control and data acquisition – systems, which are based on hardened Windows 98 systems designed to monitor the status of energy and telecoms grids.

Reporting on the program, the Wall Street Journal says that the Perfect Citizen network would rely on a set of sensors "deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack."

The paper quotes an NSA spokesperson as saying that the agency had no information to provide on the program and other companies declined to comment on the story.

Not unexpectedly, privacy hackles have been raised by the WSJ's story, which quotes a major US IT contractor Raytheon email as saying that the Perfect Citizen program seeks to show that the public sector is doing all it can to secure the critical national infrastructure.