NSA Outlines Revamped Cybersecurity Unit Plans

The United States National Security Agency is reorganizing in a manner that will consolidate both the spying and domestic cybersecurity operations.

Reuters reported Monday (Feb. 8) that the revamp comes despite the recommendation of a presidential panel that the NSA focus “solely” on espionage.

The timeline will be an extensive one, as the NSA will take two years to embrace and complete NSA21 — or its longer name, “NSA in the 21st century.”

[bctt tweet=”The NSA will take two years to embrace and complete NSA21 — or its longer name, “NSA in the 21st century.””]

The review board made up of appointees picked by President Barack Obama made a recommendation more than two years ago, dating back to the end of 2013, that the NSA focus its energies on intelligence gathered from outside the United States. That recommendation, of course, came in the wake of revelations by Edward Snowden that the U.S. had been involved in gathering communications data both here and abroad.

The initial recommendation would have led to the creation of a separate agency tied to the Justice Department that would govern technology security at government agencies and corporate computers. The panel expressed misgivings over conflicts of interest within the NSA, which told the newswire in November that it pointed out flaws that it found to U.S. tech firms 90 percent of the time, but gave no timeline, which the newswire said raised questions about whether flaws were uncovered and exploited before notification.

But now the initiative that is being directed by the Obama administration is toward a consolidated agency. That comes amid opposition from tech and privacy advocates who state that the agency that is overseeing and detecting computer software flaws should not also be the same one that warns of such weaknesses.

Reuters quoted Peter Swire, a law professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a member of the panel, as stating: “I hope the NSA will explain its strategy for continuing to rebuild trust with the private sector.”