Net attacks triple in 2 years

Cyberattacks on federal computer systems have increased by more than 250 percent over the last two years, according to data provided by the Homeland Security Department. But two of the fastest-growing categories of attacks are easily preventable. Civilian agencies reported 18,050 cyberattacks in 2008 to the Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), the DHS agency that tracks intrusions on civilian agency networks and coordinates reponses to those intrustions. That's only a fraction of the total number of attacks on federal systems last year; agencies can't monitor every intrusion onto their networks. But the data, provided to Federal Times in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, offer a fairly representative sample of the threats facing the federal government. Experts say a few fundamental management changes — centralized management of information technology systems, better education and training, and tougher access control — could prevent many of the most common attacks.