Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
DISCUSSION OF CHAPTER 6:
FROM DATA TO KNOWLEDGE: HOW INTELLIGENCE AND
SECURITY TOOLS CAN HELP
Maj.General Luigi Vellone
with contributions from Dr. A. Erez, Dr. P. Amaral, Col. D. Handy, Dr. G. de la Mora, Dr. B. Buyukoner, Dr. A.
Gabovych, Capt. L. Policarpo
Erez : If I speak from the experience of an intelligence officer, I am not directly in
countering terrorism. One of the problems is that sometimes you appoint a security
officer who is on the way to retirement, as you know that there is a job needs filled and
you send someone who is not a specialist. I think that a flaw in decision-making in this
field is, first of all, the definition of the threat in each organisation. It can be a bank. It
can be a factory that produces food, but of course it should be as it is in any security or
government institution. Once an organisation succeeds in the definition of the threat,
maybe this is the first main step on the way to solving the problem. It brings me back to
what I have said before that one of the problems in international law and international
behaviour is that we are not able to sit all together round one table from different
countries and define some terms that we can use afterwards to fight against this
phenomenon. After the definition of course we have the evaluation. We have to evaluate
the threat, we have to evaluate what we have to invest in order to prevent or fight the
threat and evaluate the outcome. We have to know if it is worthwhile investing money,
manpower or whatever. In this case, I would like to give you something which is, from
our experience, one of the solutions.
You could call it the opposition. The idea is that in each security office there should
be someone who has to automatically say the opposite to the main idea, even if he does
not believe in what he is saying. This makes people think. It starts a brainstorming
session and obliges people to think and say, “Wait a minute, perhaps he is right”.
Sometimes today they may say they do not believe in what he is saying, but this can lead
sometimes to a conclusion, although you have to be sure of what you have decided or
what you believe is the right way to solve the problem. Of course, professional people
and good human analysts and decision-makers are essential, because as I said before and
I have given some examples from my experience, good information is good information,
but if you do not have the right personnel to analyse and read it properly and take care of
information, the information by itself is not a stand-alone phenomenon. All of this
belongs to security. Once you get to the bottom line, I believe you can reach a stage
where you define the real need for security and how to implement security measures.
Vellone : Mine was an over-simplified presentation of this complex problem. But I
agree with you that human beings are one of the main problems. This is also true in the
hacker field, where I have heard it said “Think how they think”. If you want to fight
hackers maybe you have to get into their minds and start to think in the same way. That
is why analysts require a very long training; they have to think in the same way the
terrorists think. This is another important point in the need to have intelligence dedicated
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