N.S.A. Imposes Rules to Protect Secret Data Stored on Its Networks

By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT, NYT

ASPEN, Colo. — The National Security Agency has imposed new rules designed to sharply restrict the sharing and downloading of top-secret material from its computer networks after a review of how Edward J. Snowden, a former agency contractor, managed to expose several of the country’s most sensitive surveillance programs, two of the Pentagon’s most senior officials said Thursday.

First among the new procedures is a “two-man rule” — based on the model of how nuclear weapons are handled — that requires two computer systems administrators to work simultaneously when they are inside systems that contain highly classified material.

“This makes our job more difficult,” Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the head of the N.S.A. and the commander of the military’s Cyber Command, told the Aspen Security Forum, an annual meeting on security issues. He described future plans to keep the most sensitive data in a highly encrypted form, sharply limiting the number of system administrators — like Mr. Snowden — who can move data throughout the nation’s intelligence agencies and the Defense Department.

Hours before General Alexander described the new defenses, Ashton B. Carter, the deputy secretary of defense, said the conditions that allowed Mr. Snowden to download and remove data without detection amounted to “a failure to defend our own networks.”

(More here.)