Richard K. Betts Quotes

The FBI is engaged in a myriad of efforts to combat cyber threats, from efforts focused on threat identification and sharing inside and outside of government, to our internal emphasis on developing and retaining new talent and changing the way we operate to evolve with the cyber threat.

I don't hate technology, I don't hate hackers, because that's just what comes with it, without those hackers we wouldn't solve the problems we need to solve, especially security.

If you don't treat [computer and Internet] security like a religious fanatic, you are going to be hurt like you can't imagine.

Establishing robust cyberdefenses no more militarizes cyberspace than having a navy militarizes the ocean.

The very promise of safety [digital security] is iresistable temptation to hackers, the invading hordes of the 21st century.

As our use of technologies grows exponentially, so do our country's vulnerabilities. Our national security depends on the stability and reliability of our communications infrastructure. The cyber threat to IT and national security systems has never been greater.

Cyberattacks have long been hard to stop because determining where they come from takes time - and sometimes the mystery is never solved.

The biggest thing that concerns me is when we start getting countries using cybercrime to shut down infrastructure, electricity, communications systems, the Internet, et cetera.

Attacks on Internet sites and infrastructure, and the compromise of secure information, pose a particularly tricky problem because it is usually impossible to trace an attack back to its instigator.

Hackers are seen as shadowy figures with superhuman powers that threaten civilization.

The single biggest existential threat that's out there, I think, is cyber.

The DNC hack shows the rapid increase in sophistication of nation states (and Russia in particular) in using the Internet to project powers. We're seeing skilled malicious actors pushing the boundaries of what they can accomplish.

Cyberspace

For some reason, it seems that the government considers hackers who are out to line their pockets less of a threat than those who are trying to make a political point.

Now we have the hacker kids playing politics.

Cybersecurity is a new issue for the international community at large. First of all, the technologies are new and the attacks are invisible. Traditionally, if you perceived a threat, it could be seen. It was physical. But not in cyberspace.

Cyberattacks diminish rather than accentuate political violence by making it easier for states, groups, and individuals to engage in two kinds of aggression that do not arise to the level of war: sabotage and espionage. Weaponized computer code and computer-based sabotage operations make it possible to carry out highly targeted attacks on adversary’s technical systems without directly and physically harming human operators and managers.

The United States cannot wait for the cyber equivalent of the collapse of the World Trade Center.

If there's a cyberattack from China or Russia or Romania or Mexico, it may well run through a server in another country. And it may take months before you know where it really came from.

The Internet definitely could be a weapon of mass destruction - it's not going to come in a bomb, it's going to come as a cyberattack. It's pretty amazing to see what a small group of people can do if they really know how to control the universe.

Organized crime and rogue nation states and terrorists are very much focused on the Internet of things. The challenge that goes with connectivity is always security. The bad guys go wherever the return is, and now it's more lucrative for bad guys to focus on cybercrime than traditional crime.

The sooner we act, the sooner we can start turning the tables on cyberattackers.

In a modern digitalized world, it is possible to paralyze a country without attacking its defense forces: The country can be ruined by simply bringing its SCADA systems to a halt. To impoverish a country, one can erase its banking records. The most sophisticated military technology can be rendered irrelevant. In cyberspace, no country is an island.

In the 21st century, our adversaries will continue to use cyberattacks against us. We need to be prepared to defend our networks against this growing threat to our democracy, especially the most fundamental part of our political system: our elections.

All of our intelligence agencies, our Department of Defense, are all working to meet this threat. But it's a fast moving world; it's a place where offense is easier than defense, and keeping up with the next innovation in cyber-warfare is an enormous challenge.