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Government Official Predicts Catastrophic U.S. Cyber Attack

Members of the House Intelligence Committee say an attack could be in the near future

Dec 07, 2011 | 05:18 PM | 


Acton, Mass. – Dec. 7, 2011 – eIQnetworks', Inc., the only global provider of a unified situational awareness solution, today announced that the company conducted a legislative roundtable with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) along with senior security executives from various Fortune 1,000 organizations to help educate legislative directors who crafted a cyber security bill that is now being considered for full approval in the U.S. House and Senate. Last week, members of the House Intelligence Committee discussed new bipartisan legislation to address the severe threat that American businesses face in cyberspace. At the event, entitled “Protecting American Innovation in Cyberspace,” Rep. Ruppersberger stated that many senior officials believe there will be a catastrophic attack on a U.S. target in the near future.

“As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am often asked what keeps me up at night, and one of the key issues is cyber threat,” commented Rep. Ruppersberger. “Some of our top officials predict, and I agree, we will have a catastrophic cyber attack within the next year. Whether it’s an attack on a banking system or a grid system, it is going to happen and we need to be sure we protect ourselves.”

The new bipartisan legislation would promote sharing of threat intelligence by the government to private industry and provide positive authority for the private sector to protect itself and share threat information.

“With this new bill, both the government and the private sector will have a means of sharing critical security information that will help safeguard IT networks across the country,” commented John Linkous, eIQnetworks’ vice president, chief security and compliance officer. “This bill further supports situational awareness, giving organizations a clearer understanding of their infrastructure and helping to proactively protect and defend against impending, disastrous attacks. America should take notice at Rep. Ruppersberger’s warning of a severe threat and prepare today.”

The event was held at National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) headquarters and was sponsored by NCTA, U.S. Telecom and CTIA, the Wireless Association. Video of the press conference is available at: http://www.ncta.com/MediaCenter/MediaCenter/Protecting-American-Innovation-in-Cyberspace.aspx#videoStart

For more information, visit eIQnetworks’ blog at: http://situationalroom.wordpress.com/.

About eIQnetworks eIQnetworks is the only global provider of a unified situational awareness solution, serving the largest enterprises around the world including government, financial, telecommunications, retail, pharmaceutical and healthcare. The company’s unified situational awareness platform, SecureVue', delivers an accurate, timely and coherent view of the threat, compliance and risk posture via a single console. SecureVue provides real-time continuous security monitoring, compliance automation, configuration auditing and forensic analysis, all in a single solution. Vital to the protection of an organization’s infrastructure, SecureVue helps global enterprises proactively protect against cyber attacks, advanced persistent threats (APTs), data breaches and policy violations, so they can respond to incidents and implement security best practices. eIQnetworks is a privately held company headquartered in Acton, Mass. For more information, visit: http://www.eiqnetworks.com.



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