Last week FBI director Robert Mueller testified before a Senate appropriations subcommittee, where he presented the bureau’s fiscal year 2011 budget request. Mueller is seeking a total FBI budget of $8.3bn for FY2011, including a thus far unspecified amount for 163 new staff to help combat computer intrusions and $45.9m in additional funding to enhance FBI capabilities for its role in the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI).
During his address of the subcommittee, Mueller said the FBI identified several “gaps and areas” that required increased funding. Infosecurity notes that several of these key items have relevance to cybersecurity, including the aforementioned anti-systems intrusion, along with elements of foreign counterintelligence and organized crime.
One of the major points during the FBI director’s testimony focused on the agency’s need for additional funding to address cyber threats. “Foreign governments have the technical and financial resources to support advanced network exploitation, and to launch attacks on the United States information and physical infrastructure”, Mueller told the subcommittee. “Criminal hackers can also pose a national security threat, particularly if recruited, knowingly or unknowingly, by foreign intelligence or terrorist organizations”, he added.
Mueller continued by warning the Senate subcommittee that foreign actors continue to actively “target and penetrate United States institutions”, noting that “cyber-based tools” are continuously used to infiltrate the nation’s political, economic, and military technology systems. He asserted that both foreign governments and other adversaries are using what he called “non-traditional collectors” of information via cyber intrusion methods, threatening the cybersecurity of the nation by way of visiting scientists, scholars, and overseas members of the business community.
The director also highlighted the FBI’s need to combat organized crime from both domestic and international/multi-national rings. “International organized criminals use cyberspace to target individuals and United States infrastructure, using an endless variety of schemes to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from consumers and the United States economy”, Mueller affirmed.
“These schemes also jeopardize the security of personal information, the stability of business and government infrastructures, and the security and solvency of financial investment markets”, he continued.
(two images: credit FBI for both)