Managing

Cornelius Tate of the Secret Service protects key assets from cybercrime

He's done his time protecting the President, investigating credit card fraud and the like. This job, he says, is "the high point of network security"

Cornelius Tate of the USSS.

Cornelius Tate once served as one of the anonymous agents talking into his lapel phone behind dark sunglasses. Now, as a supervisory special agent with the criminal investigative division of the Secret Service (Washington, DC), he has an out-front position as a key asset program coordinator. For the last two years he's worked at Carnegie-Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) as the first full-time Secret Service representative to Carnegie-Mellon University's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).

Key assets are large and essential facilities like nuclear and fossil-fuel power plants, water treatment plants and chemical complexes. They all depend to a great extent on an automated, computer-driven operation. It's Tate's job to help protect them, by coordinating the work of private companies and federal, state and local agencies with Homeland Security.

Helping Homeland Security
"This assignment is an opportunity to use the Secret Service work we've done to assist Homeland Security," Tate says.

Tate reports to the director of infrastructure protection in the information analysis/infrastructure protection division, one of four multi-agency directorates in homeland security. The director reports to an undersecretary.

In this liaison and outreach program, "People will be distributed around the nation to bring everyone together and keep everyone in concert. It's the high point of network security," he says.

Advisory help
Nearly everyone is happy to have CERT's advisory help. "CERT's people are globally recognized as the best computer experts," says Tate.

One of their tools is a methodology that lets facilities evaluate their own security and make improvements. "If they follow it, it can bring them into 100 percent compliance by the time we go back the next year," he says.

Tate is good at this sort of thing, because he has experience as a primary participant in a Secret Service Critical Systems Protection Initiative (CSPI). This program, he says, uses cyber-electronics to protect physical infrastructures. It sounds like space-age stuff, but it has afforded real-world protection at the 2002 Olympic Games, the 2002 IMF/World Bank Conference, and the 2002 Super Bowl and Army/Navy games.

CS at Old Miss
Tate majored in CS at the University of Mississippi. He knew he didn't want to spend all his time writing programs, and he was intrigued by computer fraud. But, "I was looking for something more interesting than investigations," he says.

When Tate was in his junior year, a friend joined the Secret Service. That was also the year the Secret Service was empowered to investigate computer fraud. "It started to click," Tate remembers.

When he got his BSCS from the school of engineering in 1985, his friend took him to meet his boss at the Secret Service. "He put his arm around me like he'd known me for twenty years."

Unfortunately, it's a long application process - fourteen months in Tate's case. While he waited to get in, he sharpened his CS skills working for the IRS.

Understanding the Secret Service
The Secret Service has two missions: protection, and investigation which includes technology used for financial crimes.

The investigative mission involves the kind of work Tate does for CERT, as well as computer investigations. The Secret Service makes a big effort to raise public and corporate awareness of computer and Internet security issues.

The 3,000 special agents in the service begin their careers with two fourteen-week training sessions.

The first is at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (Glynco, GA). New agents attend with other law enforcement trainees, and the curriculum centers around the basics of law, self-defense and law enforcement. Then they attend the Secret Service's own school in Laurel, MD. They also receive specialized training in counterfeiting, computer fraud, investigations and protection.

Into the field
After their schooling is complete, special agents take field office assignments, supervised and trained on the job by senior agents. Tate returned to Little Rock for his first assignment.

"As one of the new guys, you do protection a lot," he says with a smile. "I had to work in a garbage dump once. It had its moments."

Tate also worked on computer investigations, credit card fraud, forged checks and the like. He worked with agents in other cities and assisted with search warrants and computer forensics.

John Cook, the special agent in charge of the office, became a good friend and mentor. "I could call him any time. I had a great experience," Tate says.

Agent Tate goes to Washington
After nearly five years, Tate was sent on to Washington, DC. It was 1991, during the Gulf War. In rotating assignments, he protected President George H. W. Bush and his family, and continued to pursue cyber-crimes like identity theft.

In 1994, Tate moved to the White House security branch as part of the Presidential protective detail. He was technical supervisor for White House assets. "It was the first move where my technical background really came into play," he says. "I started to specialize."

Being a CS expert helped Tate advance in the agency. He and another agent were responsible for all surveillance cameras, phones, communications, badge access and other technology-related matters.

Cornelius Tate helped guide White House security through crises like network, hardware and software failure. In 2000 he moved on to the wider arena of CERT. "With each year, technology plays a bigger role," he says.

D/C

- Kate Colborn & Christine Willard