The FBI’s Cyber Challenge Exceeds Its Bandwidth
Or so says Christopher Wray, the current director of the FBI, testifying before a Congressional committee.
My guess, having talked to my share of FBI agents, including today, is that he is correct.
The basic premise of all police work is that the number of crimes is relatively small. No so with cyber.
Also, it used to be that crime was local. It is hard to break into your house and steal your TV from Kiev. You MUST have an operative in town, even if you are in Kiev. Not so when it comes to cybercrime.
Jurisdiction was never an issue. Yeah, sometimes a crook would flee the state before the cops caught up with him or her. Now, a large percentage of cybercrime is committed offshore. Even if it comes from a country friendly to us, there are an amazing number of hoops that cops have to jump through to get information from even the friendly countries. Imagine what it is like to get information from countries that you have to Google just to figure out exactly where they are located.
As the FBI agents who briefed us today said (thank you Nate and Dennis), they need a lot of help from businesses if they even stand a chance of catching the bad guys, but if businesses do what is required, it is possible. Sometimes. Let me know if you would like a briefing.
According to this year’s budget. The FBI has 1,981 employees involved in cyber investigations. Assuming the FBI has 56 field offices and not counting all the satellite offices, that means that the FBI has about 35 employees at all levels, on average, at each field office to investigate the roughly 300,000 crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2017 and probably 10 times that many which people didn’t even bother to report.
Given that most of these crimes involve foreign countries and therefore reams of paperwork, if you ever do get cooperation, they are fighting a losing battle.
One of the roles of these roughly 2,000 people is to help state and local law enforcement solve cyber crimes reported to them, so the problem multiplies.
What this means is that you are much better off trying to keep the bad guys out rather than trying to get help after the fact.
Just a matter of simple math. Not. Enough. Resources.
Of course, it is virtually impossible for the FBI to retain top cyber talent. A really smart cyber investigator can likely earn double or more what they would make at the FBI in private industry, with less hassle and more perks. Yes, they don’t get to wear a badge and carry a gun, but that excitement wears off quickly.
The FBI is trying to improve the overall cyber knowledge of its total staff, but that is hard. These people have spent their entire careers searching for traditional crooks, This is a very different skill. You don’t send someone to a one day class and make their a cyber expert.
Source: Government Computer News.
by 