Chapter 48: Perimeter Defense

“ULTIMATELY, it’s all about power,” Henry said as he sat with Nathan, the retired Army general who had just joined his staff. “We’ve got Ari Patel working on a power conservation app and he’s making progress. He’s not a good manager, though. We have three other developers assigned to the project and it’s spinning its wheels. That’s why I’ve asked Conrad to focus on development and testing the power apps now that the network armor is in the market.”

“What’s the problem with Ari’s work?” Schwartz asked.

“It’s not so much his work as his output. He gets distracted. He came up with a good idea for tapping into the computer’s power supply. But then he got sidetracked with developing a rechargeable power cell that would replace the power supply. Another great idea, but it’s not guiding the app work. It’s a case of a brilliant mind lacking direct guidance,” Henry said.

“Okay. Just for my understanding, not because it’s my responsibility,” Schwartz said.

“You understand. Conrad is good at pulling a team together. He even managed with your team. Changing the power source and usage of computers is only a piece of the puzzle. Overall, we still get the bulk of our power from regular utility companies. And my assessment while I’ve been laid up is that they are vulnerable on two fronts,” Henry said.

“In the Pentagon, we’ve long been aware of the vulnerability of the nation’s power grid. The blow to the United States on 9/11 was mostly psychological. The enemy attempted to break the country’s economic engine by attacking what was really just a symbol of the economy: World Trade. But to cripple the country, they could attack the power grid. There are 3,000 electric utility companies in the US which should mean that it is well distributed. But attacking just the top ten would affect some 40,000,000 customers, mostly on the coasts. The connected grid, which attempts to redistribute power from company to company in an emergency, would probably leave every major city in the US in a blackout or at least a brown out.”

“You’ve studied it well,” Henry said. “I’m glad it’s on the government’s radar. But the second way to attack the power grid is through a cyberattack. That’s more your specialty, isn’t it?”

“Yes. And I can draw on some amount of data regarding that. Unfortunately, protecting the entire power grid from cyberattack is like trying to protect the entire country. Cyber borders are not as clearly defined as physical borders where we could build a wall and keep illegal immigrants from crossing. Saying ‘This is US Cyberspace,’ is a practical impossibility,” Schwartz said. “That’s why we’ve emphasized strong network defense for individual companies and most have good network defense. Some are even moving to your Delphos system.”

“If I could trust the utility companies to do their job, I’d be fine with that. I interviewed Ari extensively on this subject and like most companies who aren’t engaged in security directly, the utility companies tend to leave it to ‘the experts’ and assume if they install our software, for example, that’s all they need to do. They can get rid of the ten or twenty network engineers who have been monitoring and protecting their systems from attack.”

“So, you want to set up a version of the Delphos Network Armor that reports incursions to your central monitoring system and directs the counterattack?” Schwartz suggested.

Henry paused and tilted his head to one side while he considered Nathan’s suggestion. One of the founding principles of Open Cloak had been customers not reporting to an outside entity, and they’d stayed pretty true to that. Even Pythia Speaks did not let the company view any personal user data.

“That’s interesting. I hadn’t considered that,” he finally said. “It’s worth thinking about, but I don’t think we want to monitor any software installed on a client’s machine or network. We don’t do that with OC Optimization, OC Search, Forever Yours, or Delphos. I’d have a hard time selling the partners on the concept of monitoring other companies’ networks from inside that company.”

“From inside? You have another notion?” Nathan asked.

“I’ve been thinking that we could build a wall around select networks without looking inside,” Henry postulated. “It’s something one of my partners said, or maybe I only imagined he said it. I was on some pretty heavy painkillers after the incident. Still am. I’m not professing to have always been cogent. I’m still taking things for pain. What I remember or imagined him saying is that we need to build a digital fortress. Surround ourselves with protection. It’s pretty easy to identify and monitor traffic to an IP address. Search and browser analytics do it all the time. Would it be unreasonable to think we could identify and intercept malware attacks without them ever reaching the target at all?”

It was Nathan’s turn to consider what Henry was saying. Gradually, he began to nod.

“Not just utilities. You want to protect the server farm without installing software on every server. Is that what you want me to focus the defense group on?” he asked.

“Yes. That and any other defense mechanisms we can come up with. We should have a study and direction to present to the board in a month. Can you do it?”