COBRA warns against ‘snake oil’

Rob Stringer

Nigel Brown, the lead for resilient telecommunications strategy for the Cabinet Office, discussed the technical implications facing emergency response, and warned of scaremongering at Infosecurity Europe 2008.

The failure of mobile communications following the London bombings of 7/7 prompted COBRA (Cabinet Office Briefing Room A) to develop a new strategy when the government was accused of switching off mobile phone networks.

“Systems of that size are not used to that kind of media aftermath” Brown maintained, “just as they’re not sized for one minute past midnight on New Years morning. You attribute the fact that you can’t phone anybody to [the likelihood that] somebody else might be phoning them– but there are a hundred reasons why that call goes to their mailbox rather than to them, and people are generally more inclined to disregard all the other reasons.”

He cited interoperability of systems as the key feature affecting emergency responses.

“If you’re using other communications through the means of airwaves or business mobile radios, they may not be interoperable. You cannot necessarily use the type of mobile wireless that a lot of local authorities use to call your mobile phone.”

But according to Brown, perhaps the greatest difficulty for an emergency response team to contend with is the unknown.

“If you don’t know what you’re planning against, you can’t put measures in place.”

He puts the high frequency of new challenges down to convergence, analogising the information security world through automobiles.

“There used to be a huge variety of cars and each had a selling point. Peugeot had a selling point, Citroën had a selling point, Renault had a selling point. We had cars where the gear change came out of the dashboard; but now you know where to find the gear stick in all cars. The convergence of machines means you end up with vulnerabilities.”

The obvious risks associated with convergence gives rise to a lot of similar solutions being marketed. In a sentiment echoing Bruce Schneier, chief technical officer of BT Counterpane, Brown warned against being misled by unnecessary fear. “There are lots of people wanting to tempt you by solutions that haven’t been converged yet. Solutions are available, but do you fully understand them? No, because of snake oil. There are a lot of competing vendors with competing products who want to lock you in.”

Brown concluded that the most important factor in both emergency response and the information world in general was ‘raising awareness’.

COBRA converged 94 times in the last year for 11 different emergencies. They also led the response to the flooding last summer.

For more information, visit www.ukresilience.gov.uk

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