| 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
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Kate Colborn & Christine Willard | 
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