Official voices concerns about critical infrastructure

The computer hardware and software systems controlling the nation's critical infrastructure are grossly insecure and outdated, and must be replaced with security-conscious systems quickly, a National Institutes of Standards and Technology official said Monday. "We need control hardware and software that has system protection and security built in from the beginning," NIST Director Arden Bement said in a keynote speech at the National Science Foundation workshop on Critical Infrastructure Protection. "New technologies are emerging, technologies that make ever increasing use of the Internet and common commercial operating systems with all the security issues that implies," Bement added.

Bement called for new standards for controlling system security, interoperability and redundancy, and touted the work underway at the American National Standards Institute on homeland security standards.