Tribe of Hackers

13Jim Christy

“Sometimes you have to go backward or laterally to be in a position to move forward.”

Twitter: @Jimchristyusdfc

Jim Christy is a retired special agent who specialized in cybercrime investigations and digital forensics for more than 32 years with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3). He now works in the private sector and is a cyber lead for the DB Cooper Cold Case Team.

If there is one myth that you could debunk in cybersecurity, what would it be?

The one myth I would like to debunk is that the government has your back when it comes to cybersecurity. The government can’t take care of its own problems, let alone help its citizens. Plus, it’s not the government’s mission. The different government agencies are not created equal and certainly don’t share information among themselves. State and local governments are, woefully, decades behind the federal agencies in protecting themselves. They certainly can’t help you. You’re on your own.

In fact, the intelligence community (IC) actually works against the best interests of citizens and other government agencies. The only thing that matters to the IC is offense. If they detect a vulnerability in an operating system, software package, or network, they hold that close to the chest so they can exploit it, no matter how much that vulnerability puts individual ...