Woodward: Are our computers safe?

WASHINGTON - Even Bob Woodward doesn’t trust the Internet.

Last week, after Vanity Fair surprised everyone last week by disclosing the identity of Deep Throat, The Washington Post published a lengthy, detailed retrospective by Woodward on W. Mark Felt, the FBI agent who served as his secret informant during Watergate. Woodward had the story essentially ready to go, because he had been preparing it for when Felt died.

The story, along with other critical information, was kept on a computer in his home that wasn't connected to the Internet, Woodward told a group of computer security officials Monday. Woodward said he keeps all his important stories on this computer, physically disconnected from the world of computer hackers.

Woodward's remarks — along with the news of one of the biggest data-loss incidents on record — underscored how much work still lies ahead for the computer security industry, which gathered here Monday for an annual Gartner conference.

"Don't you think the average person is kind of scared?" Woodward asked. He cited statistics indicating 80 percent of consumers aren’t sure if they have been attacked while in cyberspace.

"How many people have ever been in a car that's broken down and don't know it?" he said.

Separately, Citigroup's consumer finance division, CitiFinancial, revealed Monday that a box of data tapes headed for a credit bureau was missing and that the tapes contained private information on 3.9 million consumers.

It was the latest in a series of disclosures from banks, data brokers, retailers and even universities that personal identification information had been exposed or stolen. "There has been an orgy of disclosures," said Gartner analyst John Pescatore.

The stream of admissions concerns Bruce Schneier, considered one of the founders of computer cryptography and now the CEO of Counterpane Internet Security Inc. He said such government-mandated disclosures were initially designed to shame companies into taking better care of consumers' data. But the California state law's effect is now muted, he said.

"The public shaming effect is less and less as more and more people do it," he said. He suggested that news agencies and consumers have now become tired of the disclosures — minimizing the deterrent effect.

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