NSA monitoring ISIS' cyber capabilities

US' National Security Agency (NSA) Chief Admiral Mike Rogers stated at a recent conference that he is keeping an eye on the media-savvy ISIS's cyber capabilities. US military leaders stated that Islamic State have taken to social networking sites to promote violence and have been posting carefully choreographed beheading videos online and have been using social media to recruit foreign Islamists to the fight.

Senior Pentagon officials stated before the Congress that they were preparing for a longer-term campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, Rogers said cyberdefence was a long-term effort. He added that NSA plans to have 6,200 cyber employees by 2016 to detect and deflect cyber threats, and Rogers urged greater cooperation on cyber security between business, government and industry.

Rogers said at a cyber security conference in Washington, "We need to assume that there will be a cyber dimension increasingly in almost any scenario that we're dealing with. Counter terrorism is no different. Clearly, ISIL has been very aggressive in the use of media, in the use of technology, in the use of the internet. It's something I'm watching," he said, using an acronym for the group.

"There are a lot of groups out there — individuals, nation-states — who feel that this is an area worth investing in, because it achieves positive outcomes for them if they can penetrate systems," Rogers said at the Billington Cyber security Summit. "This is not a small problem and it's not one that's going to go away."

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York last week, "Its public messaging and social media is as slick and as effective as any I've ever seen from a terrorist organization."

Cyber security expert James Lewis of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies stated that he did not think Islamic State posed any immediate cyber threat to American interests. "They'd need a connection to the Syrians, Iranians or the Russians, and that's unlikely to happen," Lewis said. "They're also nuts and cyber doesn't scratch the itch." 

Source: TOI