PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo.—Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Thursday her department will emphasize cyber security because it’s an area that’s “ripe for attack by different sources.”
Napolitano said preventing or responding to attacks on computer networks is crucial to her department’s role.
She didn’t say who might launch a cyber attack but says private sector infrastructure is of particular concern.
Napolitano spoke at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, headquarters of the U.S. Northern Command, the command responsible for the military’s homeland security role. She met Thursday with Gen. Victor E. Renuart, commander of Northcom and NORAD, the U.S.-Canadian command that monitors air threats to the continent.
Napolitano said her department needs to be help security agencies get advanced technology to combat cyber attacks.
“This is an area that Americans are beginning to realize is ripe for attack by different sources,” she said. “The ability to detect, to prevent, to respond to quickly, in the private sector particularly, for infrastructure that is controlled by the private sector, is very key from the homeland security standpoint.”
Napolitano also said the swine flu continues to spread in the United States and that health officials are monitoring the evolution of the outbreak in the Southern Hemisphere, where flu season is getting under way, for clues about what the U.S. might face this fall.
She said her department and Northcom were still working closely to monitor the virus “because that strain of flu may actually rebound and come back, and we want to be prepared should that actually occur.”
Napolitano, who is under consideration by the Obama administration for a seat on the Supreme Court, said she has not communicated with the White House about the possibility. She refused to say if she would accept the nomination if offered.
President Barack Obama is a “Supreme Court scholar, a constitutional scholar, himself,” she said. “I trust his judgment in that area.”
