A company that provides computer security to the private sector and the U.S. government — RSA, the security division of EMC Corporation based in Hopkinton, Mass. — announced tonight it was hit by “an extremely sophisticated cyber attack”. Senator Susan Collins, Ranking Member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released the following statement.
“The cyber attack revealed by RSA today underscores the serious and sophisticated cyber threat we face. The threat of a catastrophic cyber attack is real. Attacks are happening now. The Senate’s Sergeant at Arms has reported that the computer systems of the Executive Branch agencies and the Congress are probed or attacked an average of 1.8 billion times per month. Cyber crime costs our national economy $8 billion annually. Congress needs to fundamentally reshape how the federal government works collaboratively with the private sector to address all cyber threats, from espionage and cyber crime to attacks on the most critical infrastructure. The need to pass comprehensive cyber security legislation is more urgent than ever.”
Senator Collins, along with Senators Joe Lieberman and Tom Carper, recently introduced a bill that would secure the nation’s most sensitive and critical cyber infrastructure and protect Internet freedom.
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