THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE WASHINGTON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 2 0 DEC 1988 Honorable Constance J Horner Director Office of Personnel Management Washington D C 20415 Dear Ms Horner Shortly after the Internet computer virus attack which was first detected on November 2 1988 we formed an executive after action assessment team within the Department of Defense The team met on November 14 1988 and reviewed the events and actions taken after detection of the virus on ARPANET and reviewed the report by the National Computer Security Center titled Proceedings of the Virus Post MortenzMeeting November 8 1988 Enclosure reviewed the DARPA report on the technical characteristics of the virus Enclosure and concluded with recommendations for improving the Department's responsiveness to future attacks As you will see from the team s report to me Enclosure the two areas on which we need to focus are the development of a central national level coordination center and increased computer security awareness and training It became quickly evident during their analysis that the actions that need to be taken in the unclassified domain should be addressed jointly by the National Computer Security Center NCSC and the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST with technical coordination from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency I have requested that each of the Defense Components involved in the after action assessment support the recommendations on a priority basis In tasking the National Security Agency I have asked that the NCSC be ready to work with the staff of NIST to address quickly the establishment of a central coordination center and the publication and wide distribution of computer security lessons learned from this incident Because of the implications to training that these activites will have I have asked that 0PM be kept informed as these activities proceed I solicit your personal support for this effort and ask that we move rapidly to improve our national posture to deal with potential computer security problems in the future Sincerely 2 l r Enclosures This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu