FBI struggles to retain cybercrime experts

The FBI suffers from a high turnover of experts in cybercrime but continues to get quality people, FBI Director Louis Freeh said Wednesday.

"There's a bull market" for skilled FBI cyber-crime workers, Freeh told a World Economic Forum event held at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In order to keep workers in the agency, he said, "we basically rely on people's patriotism."

That can be difficult when agency employees earning $50,000 to $55,000 interact every day with former FBI workers now making six figures in the private sector, he said. Fortunately for the agency, the number of qualified applicants continues to far outnumber the job vacancies.

The number of criminal cases involving computer technology is growing exponentially, Freeh said, and the top challenge facing the FBI in working against cybercrime is maintaining the balance between protecting personal privacy and enforcing laws. He said the same constitutional balance between privacy and the necessity of a government to stop crimes should apply to the electronic age.

Governments must cooperate to combat cybercrime, and the FBI is working to develop global networks, Freeh said. But he added that it is critical that the private sector--which has much to gain from security--cooperate globally as well.

Businesses often are reluctant to inform authorities when security breaches occur because it can hurt their investor confidence, he said. In a recent survey of businesses, 85 percent said they had experienced a breach of their security, but only 36 percent had reported it.

The FBI has become a global agency, Freeh said, with 40 offices worldwide, compared to 17 in 1993. He said that in his lifetime, the agency went from an almost entirely domestic focus to a worldwide focus. For example, the agency receives about 100 requests for police assistance from foreign governments each day.

It is necessary to think globally in order to keep up with increasingly sophisticated criminals, he said. It also takes a much greater commitment of resources.

In the past, the FBI could match the technology of the criminal, Freeh said, but in recent years, it has been difficult to make sure the agency is on the same 18-month cycle as the technology being deployed. "It's a very acute problem," he said. "Sometimes, we think we are barely keeping up."

The FBI operates a center for expertise in computer crime in Washington that also serves as a warning center for incidents and a training facility. The center has computer squads that work on local, state and international levels to develop computer forensic labs, he said.

Corruption is a significant problem worldwide, and the FBI has trained 5,500 foreign police officers in 26 countries in the democratic rule of law, Freeh said. They also push governments to pay higher salaries and give incentives to police prosecutors, judges and others susceptible to corruption. Freeh said the world is "probably not" more corrupt than it was 20 years ago.