As it evolves, the superhighway will become an increasingly tempting target for intruders with the technical expertise and resources to cause great harm, including insiders, hackers, foreign governments conducting political and military intelligence operations, domestic and foreign enterprises engaged in industrial espionage, and terrorist groups seeking to disrupt our society or cripple our economy.Unauthorized disclosure, theft, modification, or malicious destruction of such information could bankrupt a business, interrupt vital public service, or destroy lives. Significant effort will be needed to define, develop, test, and implement measures to overcome the security challenge posed by the increasing complexity, interconnectivity, and the sheer size of the evolving superhighway. These measures include identifying the superhighway’s security and privacy requirements and developing tools and techniques to satisfy the requirements. However, critics of federal involvement argue that the current federal strategy represents a danger to civil liberties and that individuals should be free to choose the technical means for achieving information security. As a result, the challenge will be establishing a reasonable level of consensus among the major players—the government, the computer and communications industry, the business community, and civil liberty groups—on how to ensure information security and privacy on the information superhighway. Cryptography will play a key role in the development of five of the six security services for the information superhighway. To address this dilemma, the federal and private sectors have initiated interoperability efforts, including the assessment of various “open network” architectures. Network Reliability Is Emerging as a Key Challenge

Ensuring the reliability of the information superhighway will be essential.
Why GAO Did This Study

GAO reviewed the technical issues associated with protecting the information superhighway from unauthorized access.

What GAO Found

GAO found that: (1) the information superhighway poses technical challenges concerning the security, privacy, and reliability of personal and proprietary information; (2) a large proportion of the information that will traverse the superhighway will be sensitive and a tempting target for hackers, foreign governments conducting political and military intelligence operations, domestic and foreign enterprises engaged in industrial espionage, or terrorist groups seeking to disrupt society or the economy; (3) significant effort will be needed to define, develop, test, and implement measures to prevent unauthorized access to the superhighway; (4) although the federal government could play a leading role in ensuring the superhighway's security, critics argue that individuals should be free to choose the technical means for meeting their security requirements; (5) a major challenge facing the development of the information superhighway will be creating a consensus between the federal government, computer and communications industry, business community, and civil liberties groups on how to ensure information security and privacy; (6) federal and private sectors have begun establishing uniform standards to ensure the superhighway's interoperability; and (7) questions remain about how to protect the superhighway from large network failures and encourage the telecommunications industry to develop a secure and reliable infrastructure.