La Salle Professor Analyzes Email Security After Clinton Surrenders Email Server To FBI
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Dean Henry, Adjunct Professor of Internet Security at La Salle University, attempted to assess the risk to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email server that she recently surrendered to the FBI, saying we don't know for sure whether it posed an increased risk for hacking.
Henry told Jeff Bolton on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that regardless of whether Clinton broke any rules regarding the security of her emails, keeping up with the capabilities of hackers is essential.
"I haven't happened to see a document that said that she actually broke the rules. It would've been cleaner had she just used the State Department's email address but this is, although unusual, not unique to have a personal email server at home. What she did could've been technically very secure but as time progressed, and now we're constantly under attack, we've had the White House unclassified email system attacked, we've had the State Department email system attacked, we've had the Office of Personnel Management security breached and we're in a different world now over the last few years. You have to assume you're going to be a target. You've got to assume you're going to be attacked."
He did say he believes, had Clinton chose to use the email system provided by the State Department, and intrusion would surely have been detected.
"In theory, I guess it would be easier for the bad guys to go after a private email server than something that's being controlled by the government because you have to assume the government has a lot of the controls in place that a private server may or may not. I keep saying may or may not because I'm not really sure of her architecture. But for example, intrusion detection, you would assume that if somebody is breaking into your computers, the government would know about it pretty quickly, that the information is encrypted, things of that nature. If you have a private server set up, you may not have all of those bells and whistles, somebody monitoring it. So it may be easier for the bad guys."
Henry reiterated that internet security is a high priority for both the government and the business sector.
"It's on the top of every large corporation CEO's mind now. We've seen all kinds of hacks, the Sony hack, Target etc. In terms of resources they have to devote, I've been reading, everyone's been reading about China, and they have full government branches or military branches set up and that's all they do. We get up in the morning, have coffee and go to work. That's what they do. That's their only job: just to hack specific areas."
