US spy agencies look to cloud computing

US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said cloud computing will play a major role as the nation's spy agencies work to integrate computer and information systems to share more data securely. Cloud computing has "huge potential for achieving savings and promoting integration," Clapper told an audience last week at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a policy group in Washington. Cloud computing lets users run programmes and store data over the internet. Along with it will come a requirement for security and privacy, especially as intelligence agencies work toward the "big idea" of a joint information-technology system, Clapper said. "Over the next five years, I think we'll make some serious and notable changes" in systems for labelling, tagging, monitoring and accounting for information shared across agencies, he said. The 2010 WikiLeaks episode, in which hundreds of thousands of classified records and US State Dep-artment cables were made public, spurred the drive to improve security while ensuring agencies and personnel get the information they need to protect and defend the U.S. Intelligence agencies are trying to devise a way of tagging and labelling data to separate more sensitive information about sources and methods used to collect intelligence from the substance that operatives, analysts and officials need. The aim is to allow better information-sharing among traditionally secretive and turf-sensitive agencies without jeopardising security. Insider threat The US also will spend more on auditing and monitoring its information systems to track use of data and prevent unauthorised access, Clapper said. "We need to develop a national insider threat policy," he said. Bradley Manning, a US Army private stationed in Iraq at the time, is charged in military proceedings with illegally passing the classified information published on by WikiLeaks in 2010. President Barack Obama in October established a task force to develop a government-wide programme to detect and stop potential insider threats, when he issued an executive order outlining responsibilities of federal agencies for securing classified information on their computer networks.