President Clinton Tuesday highlighted his $2 billion budget proposal-up from $1.75 billion allotted for fiscal 2000-to address Internet security, including funding for a National Plan for Information Systems Protection.
But Clinton cautioned that people shouldn't overreact to the threat of Internet security demonstrated by last week's attacks on popular Web sites like Yahoo! and E-Trade.
"We ought to leave with a sense of confidence that this is a challenge that was entirely predictable," Clinton told reporters. "It's part of the price of the success of the Internet," he said, rejecting the description of recent hacker attacks as "an electronic Pearl Harbor."
The administration has included a request for $9 million in its pending emergency request to Congress as a down payment on fiscal 2001 cyber-protection initiatives.
But White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart indicated that, despite the surprisingly effective effort last week by hackers to bring down popular Web sites-and today's focus on what more can be done-the administration has requested "the right amount of funds" from Congress, and is not considering supplemental requests for additional money.
"We have a very vigorous and strong plan to protect federal computer assets," Lockhart said, adding that the private sector had been similarly aggressive. "It's quite important to keep what's gong on here in perspective," he said. "We've got denial of service attacks ... we're not talking about [hackers] taking the system down."
President Clinton held a meeting about Internet security on Tuesday with Chief of Staff John Podesta, Attorney General Janet Reno, Commerce Secretary William Daley, National Security Council Director Sandy Berger and 29 technology industry officials.
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