NSA Says 'Perfect Citizen' is a Research Program

The U.S. National Security Agency confirmed the existence of a controversial program aimed at protecting the country's critical infrastructure Thursday, but disputed claims that the program would monitor network traffic on critical infrastructure networks.

By Robert McMillan
Thu, July 08, 2010

IDG News Service — The U.S. National Security Agency confirmed the existence of a controversial program aimed at protecting the country's critical infrastructure Thursday, but disputed claims that the program would monitor network traffic on critical infrastructure networks.

The program, called Perfect Citizen, was first disclosed Thursday in a Wall Street Journal article that said the NSA "would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity."

Raytheon (RTN) won the US$100 million contract for the first phase of Perfect Citizen, which is funded by the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, the Journal reported.

In a statement released late Thursday, the NSA confirmed that Perfect Citizen exists. But the spy agency called the newspaper's description "inaccurate," saying that the program is "purely a vulnerabilities-assessment and capabilities-development contract."

"This is a research and engineering effort," the NSA said. "There is no monitoring activity involved, and no sensors are employed in this endeavor."

"This contract provides a set of technical solutions that help the National Security Agency better understand the threats to national security networks, which is a critical part of NSA's mission of defending the nation," the NSA said. "Any suggestions that there are illegal or invasive domestic activities associated with this contracted effort are simply not true."

Raytheon declined to comment.

Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert's e-mail address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com

You are here: Business/Management Topics » Government » News

Most Recent Government use of IT Stories

White Papers »

The Next Generation of Archiving

Governing electronic content archives presents a significant challenge for any
organization, regardless of industry or regulatory profile. Content stores and
communication channels have multiplied and user behaviors now include
myriad mobile and social media interaction methods. These factors make
it difficult to quantify and leverage the value of enterprise information.

Top Solutions and Tools to Prevent Devastating Malware

Custom malware frequently goes undetected. According to Forrester Research, the best way to reduce risk of breach is to deploy file integrity monitoring (FIM) tools that provide immediate alerts. This white paper has been brought to you by NetIQ, the leader in solving complex IT challenges.

Identity Governance: The Business Imperatives

This white paper describes the business challenges and opportunities that are driving interest in Identity Governance while discussing considerations your organization should make to help achieve project success.

CA Technology Brief: CA Point of View: Content Aware Identity & Access Management

This paper explores the concept of content-aware IAM, describes the integrated architecture for this new approach, and highlights the benefits that this approach provides.

Measuring the Business Value of CI in the Data Center - IDC-HP White Paper

One of the key strategies that IT teams are pursuing to reduce capital costs while boosting asset utilization and employee productivity is the transition to highly virtualized data centers. However, IDC finds that expectations for further boosts in IT asset use and operational efficiency often surpass the actual results for a variety of reasons. These problems can quickly overwhelm any hoped-for benefits as the scope of virtual server deployment expands.

Accelerate time to application value

For your IT organization to keep pace with the business, you need a new, faster approach to infrastructure deployment-an approach that increases agility and accelerates time to application value. That's HP Converged Systems. Built on Converged Infrastructure, these systems deliver the industry's first portfolio of pre-integrated, tested, and optimized infrastructure solutions for applications running in virtual, cloud, dedicated, or hybrid environments.

Webcasts »

Virtual Desktop Solutions in the Federal Government

Federal IT managers are on the forefront of realizing the benefits that a secure, easy-to-manage virtual desktop environment can provide. The key is how to deliver the end-user experience that is comparable to a physical desktop. This webcast will show how the recently released VMware View 5 environment is being used to deploy virtual desktops to provide mission-critical solutions around Disaster Recover/COOP, telework and secure mobile applications to federal organizations. View this webcast and learn how new features and benefits of the VMware View 5 environment meet the needs of Federal customers

Apps QuickStart Series Part 2: Designing and Deploying SQL Server on VMware vSphere

Download this webcast to learn about the design considerations for virtualizing SQL workloads, performance and scalability information and high-availability options, as well as support considerations

Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View - Webcast

Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business

Architecting a Modern Approach to Data Management

Applications are changing - they're increasingly web-oriented, global in nature and run from multiple device types. Additionally, the volume of data is growing exponentially every year. How do you ensure your applications have fast, accurate, up-to-date information in this new world? Modern applications are data-intensive; delivering data the old way using monolithic databases isn't working. What's needed is a modern approach to data. One that scales-out as needed and delivers predictable high performance, but without sacrificing data consistency or integrity.

Introduction to VMware View 5

VMware View™ 5 simplifies IT management while increasing end user freedom by delivering desktop services from your cloud. Building upon VMware's leadership in desktop virtualization, VMware View 5 delivers a high-performance user experience while giving IT greater policy control.

View this webcast and find out how VMware View 5 can help you:
- Deliver the highest fidelity experience of desktop services across any device and any network
- Simplify and automate IT management, security and control of desktop services
- Reduce the costs associated with your desktop environment

The CIO's View: Time-to-Value Through Automation

IT professionals are being asked to deliver faster "time-to-value" than ever before. An IDG Research survey found that CIOs are eager to invest in technologies that will enable them to get new applications and services up quickly, achieving faster time-to-value.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter