that's not how nato approached c bosnia or kosovo or libya. nato now the policy of nato or the tl united states for that matter ts tell the perpetrators of mass inncities in syria or elsewherg that they can go on killingthe innocent civilians by the hundreds of thousands in thethe greatest alliance in historywi will not even bother to conduct any planning? now is that our policy? because that is the practical effect of this kind of rhetoric. it gives assad and his foreign allies a green light for greater brutality. not surprisingly, many countries, especially syria's neighbors, are also hedging their bets on the outcome in syria. they think assad will go but they're not yet prepared to put

all their chips on that bet. even less so now that assad's forces have broken homs and seem to be gaining momentum. to be gaining momentum. there is only one nation, there is only one nation that can thed alter this dynamic, and that is the united states of america. the president must stateo unequivocally that under no circumstances will assad beur allowed to finish restarted, and there is no futurlie in which assad and his lieutenants will remain in control ofhe syria ane that the united states is wght prepared to use the full weight of our air power to make it so.e it is only when we have clearly and completely committed can ourselves that we can expect other nations to do the same. only then would we see what is w really possible in winninginte international support to stop the killing in syria.

changes and risks and uncertainties? absolutely. there are no ideal options andfm syria. all of them contain significant risk. qck many people will be quick to raise concerns about the course of action i am proposing. many of these concerns havee merit, but none so much thatctg they should keep us from actinge we continue to hear it said, we should not assist the opposition militarily because we don't know who these people are.rgum the secretary of state, hillary clinton, repeated this argument just last week, adding that we could end up helping. it is possible thestraon d administration does not know much about the armed oppositiono in syria.havey how much effort have they reallu made to find out? dectl the engage these people directlt

instead, most of the best information we have about the on resistance is thanks to courageous journalists, some ofs homes have given their lives to tell the story of the syrianon people. one of these journalists is a reporter working named dan euroe and. spent months in the country,ch t including much time with the armed opposition. here is how he described it recently, and i quote, thede regime and its supporterscily ad describe the opposition, especially on opposition, musl m brotherhood, supporters, moslem brotherhood supporters, terrorists, this is just not true. t it is worth noting that all the fighters i met were soon the muslims, and most were pious.f the multitude of reasons,rhds, friends, neighborhoods, villages, apartments, revenge, y

self-defense, dignity, their brethren and other parts of the country who are alsong fighting. they do not read religious literature or listen to salmon's they're views on as long are consistent with the general attitudes of syrian and sudanesi society which is conservative and religious. there are many small groups insu the armed opposition. it is difficult to describe their aetiology in general terma .rhoodol the muslim brotherhood ideologies is not important inot syria and did not play significant roles in thebu revolution, but most serious in these taking part in the uprising. lya describing average citizens in egypt, bolivia, and uneasy, our other nations in the region.ful we should be a little more bef careful before we embrace thisth regime propaganda about the

opposition in syria.e mconc recently should not let thesekee misconceptions cause us to keepa the armed resistance in syria at arm's length because that is just self-defeating. tha i can assure you, they are not e pursuing the same policy. sn they're eager to try to hijack the syrian revolution, just as they have tried to hijack the arabs spring movement and egypt and tunisia and libya and elsewhere. s they're trying. so far they're failing. the people of these countries are broadly rejecting everything outside stands for. they're not eager to trade secular attorney for the credit terni. the other reason al qaeda is a failing is the community of nations, especially the united states has supported them.he we are giving them a betterative alternative. f the surest way for al qaeda to i gain a foothold in the serioushe

for us to turn our backs on these brave syrians who are fighting to defend themselves. after all, since the iraqis were willing to ride with al qaeday t when they felt desperate enough. unamerican gave them a better alternative they turned their guns on al qaeda. be why should it be different in syria?nc another objection to providing o military assistance to the syrian opposition is that the si conflict has become aan sectarin civil war.lood enables the simi majority to take a bloody end indiscriminate revenge against the minority. this is a serious and legitimat. concern, and it is only growings worse the longer the conflictger goes on. i as we saw in iraq or lebron-lin before it, time webers the hard lines in a conflict like this. the suffering at the hands of assad only stoats the temptation for revenge which in turn only

deepens fierce among the alliedp side and strengthens their incentive to keep fighting.lo for this reason alone eight is a all the more compelling to findo a way to end the bloodshed as soon as possible.ks furthermore, the risks ofther sectarian conflict will exists in syria whether they get more involved or not. we will at least has someombi ability to try to mitigate thesi risks if we work to assist the armed opposition now. that will at least tell us to to know them better and to establish some trust. we took their side when theythet needed it most. we should not overstate the potential influence we should gain with opposition groups inside syria, but will only diminish the laundry way to offer them meaningful support.ay we can't say for certain that we

will have no influence whatsoever with these people. this is a real moral dilemma. we cannot allow the opposition t in syria to be crushed at present why we worry about the future. we are also here by the administration that we should not contribute to the t militarization of the conflict. if only russia and iran should that commitment, instead thereig are shamelessly fuelling the assad is killing machine. we need to deal with theit realt as it is, as we wish it to be. the reality is largely a 1-sidea fight for the aggressor is not lacking for military means and zeal.t assad seems to be fully. committed to crushing the opposition at all costs. iran and russia appear to be

fully committed to helping him do it. they have taken up arms tohemss defend themselves in theirr comi communities appear to be fully committed to acquiring theesis necessary weapons to resist assad. leading arab states appear increasingly committed to providing those weapons. ones and the only ones who seemict concerned about the militarization of the conflictie of the united states and some oe our allies, the time has come to ask a different question. tear do we want to win in syriai our friends or enemies we knowhe the opposition is divided. we know the armed resistance inside the country lacks cohesion or command-and-control. we know that some elements ofpah the opposition may sympathize with violent extremist h ideologies or harbor dark dotsno of sectarian revenge.

we know that many of serious immediate neighbors remain cautious about taking overly provocative actions that could undermine assad, and we know thy american people are weary of anw conflict, justifiably so, and we would rather focus on domestic problems.. these are realities. but while we are compelled to ae ignore some, we are nott condemned to accept them forever . with results and wise policy wes can shape better realities. that is what the syrian people of done. c by no rational calculation agast should this uprising against assad still be going on. the syrian people are foond outmatched, have guns, lacking for food and water and otherre i basic needs.e there are confining in regina is disregard for human dignity ande capacity for sheer savagery is

limitless. an entire year syrian people dth have faced death and those unspeakable things worse than death may still have not givenlh up. still they take to the streetsif to protest peacefully forl car justice. so they carry on the fight, andt they do so on behalf of many of the same universal values we share, and many of the same interests as well. these people are allies.o they want many of the samethey e things we do.bounda they have expanded the boundaries of what everyone thought was possible. they have earned our respect, st and now they need our support to finish with the started. the syrian people deserve to, a succeed. shame on-if we fail to help. mr. president, i yield the floor

>> the absence of a quorum. >> on wednesday defense secretary leon panetta and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, general martin dempsey, will testify before senator mccain in the senate armed services committee on the situation in syria. become much live coverage. 9:00 a.m. eastern. >> this week on the communicators, a look at cyber security with two business executives involved in safeguarding three cases systems. they also talk about the regulation of their industry. >> and now we want to introduce you to robert dix, vice-president of juniper networks and recently you testified that a house hearing on a server security. what was your message to the members of the energy and commerce subcommittee. >> it is really important that the time of this tell us that we are facing in cyber security that we maintain an environment that facilitates investment and innovation and does not do

anything to confine the ability of the private sector which owns and operates the majority of the networks upon which all critical infrastructure and most of the things we have come used to in our daily lives rely on from having to have their attention directed away from being nimble, and joe, and fast to respond to this challenge as it continues to grow. >> is that in direct reference to the white house plan that was introduced last year on several security which puts an emphasis on vhs? >> it's a clear response to it around the parameters that have been outlined in some of the legislative initiatives that we see. >> do you expect cedras security legislation to move through the congress this year? >> my crystal ball is a little cloudy about that. i have reason to believe that there will be a legislative initiative that will be introduced on the senate side. not entirely sure what it will quite get. believe there may be some pieces of legislation introduced on the

house side, and entirely sure what that looks like yet. what is really important here and valuable is that we are having a dialogue in a different way than we have in the past. trying to drive toward having some arrows to the core that can help us fight this fight. we may not always agree on that path full birth, but having this dialogue and finding our common ground is extremely important at the time of the adversaries getting more sophisticated. >> what is a juniper networks, and how would it cyber security legislation affects your company? >> one of the world's leaders interested high-performance network and security solutions. we are a hard where and software manufacturer. we are involved in datacenter and ritualization, mobile security, so we span the spectrum of offerings in the space. one of our successes has been that we invest heavily in research and development to drive innovation. we are u.s.-based company with offices and operations around the world, but we believe innovation is the answer to

meeting the challenges of the future. competing, storage, networking is changing as we know it, and it is changing rapidly. the only way we will be able to respond to that and be able to address the challenges assisted with that is to innovate. so we believe in that investment demand rory a little bit about anything that may have an unintended consequence of constrain our ability to innovate or taking our eye off the ball the mission. >> also joining this year is gautham nagesh, the main editor of the sea cute technology. >> thanks. the number one question for a lot of americans unfamiliar with this issue is how serious is the threat when we talk about seven security? specifically, how far away are we from an attack that killed either cause significant physical damage or cripple our nation's economy in some way? >> we always have to be vigilant, but one thing i want to remind everyone, including our viewers is that in recent

risk assessments conducted across the ip in telecommunications sector we have demonstrated utilizing a recognized methodology that the networks we rely on to their resilience. that does not mean that they are not subject to attack, but we are resilience. networks can respond, and we respond. folks read a lot of the press, some of the high-profile breaches that we have. we don't read too much about the hundreds of thousands of export its sense that we have repelled every day because we have made these kinds of adjustments. we to raise the level of awareness and consciousness of american people from small businesses to the academic community, nonprofits always to large enterprises about how they can better protect themselves in cyberspace. >> to talk about a lot of deflected a tax which is clearly true. yet seen numbers thousands of not millions of attacks and made every year, but it is also fair to say that it is not how many

that are deflected but how many get through. one attack could foresee be enough to cause massive damage. again, the question is are we at a place where the cyber attacks could result in the loss of lives or perhaps billions of dollars of damage to our economy? >> the reason the nature and of itself a deterrent. however, as i mentioned earlier, the adversaries that we are dealing with today are more committed, but a resource, and becoming more sophisticated. so we talk about the advanced persistent threat. i worry about that and whether or not we are actually paying sufficient attention to that. let's remember this, the point of entry, this is what we don't talk enough about, the point of entry oftentimes is that a very low-level. botnets are generally the result of home computers that are overtaken by the adversary because of the poor lack of hygiene. and it is not because people are interested, they don't know how.

small-business is are ripe with victims getting into the supply chain, as an example, so we have to take care of raising the bar and cyber hygiene is one of the ways to do that. that is about 80 percent of the issue. the other 20 percent is tougher and more sophisticated. i'm happy to report that there are extraordinary efforts underway with the public and private sector working together to address some of those more sophisticated threats. >> on that 80% issue we have seen a campaign on the part of congress to raise awareness of cyber security to make americans aware they need to safeguard their information. we have also seen some rather heated retort by this issue, the cyber 9/11, one of the sponsors on this and that seven security bill. how do you -- that seems a little out of line with the threat that you are laying out. how do you reconcile the two? >> some people are driving a particular agenda, and that's fine. i don't want to minimize the risk here, but this is about

managing risk. we can't predict everything all the time. right now i don't believe we're doing a very good job of the basic blocking and tackling of cyber hygiene, education awareness, creating an operation capability so that we can improve upon detection prevention and mitigation. today we still spend a lot of our time, energy, and resource around response and recovery. we need to build the capability with government and industry to create something like a national weather service or center for disease control where we have a nerve center that has the pulse of what is going on and now works in a steady state and during any point of escalation. we have the ability to do that, but we have some policy issues in the way, some legal issues in the way. it is really not a technology issue. i think we need to have a different dialogue around the impediments to creating an operational capability, creating the sustained national education awareness campaign. though law enforcement tools that we need we don't have today, and the ways that we might leverage government

procurement activity to be able to draw changes in behavior. >> so, how is it that the role of dhs as proposed in the obama cyber security plan, how does that impede what you think should be the goal? >> as an example, there is a recommendation and the legislative initiative under cover critical infrastructure which in and of itself is clearly defined as what would qualify or not qualified to the discretion of the secretary of homeland security and confrontation with others to be able to determine that. talks about the establishment of seven security performance requirements. it talks about an annual certification process. it talks about third-party assessments to validate that the presumed cover critical infrastructure is meeting the performance measures of those requirements. all of that takes time. just building the performance requirements and building the compliance model, regulatory regime that i refer to it as takes time, and by the time that

is complete the risk has changed so much. very dynamic. whatever comes out of that is old news. we need to be nimble, fast, an agile in being allowed to respond to that some of which means we need to facilitate greater innovation in the ability in the private sector to have access to intelligence information to improve the response date. break down some of the barriers that we have had that impede our ability to collaborate better. >> in your testimony, congressional testimony you said, it is imperative that all the signals to the server security is truly a share results ability. true collaborative approach between government and the private sector. the private sector owns and drives the majority of the innovations and also owns and operates the majority of our nation's critical infrastructure >> that's correct which is why it is absolutely essential we be a tabling based in this dialogue with their counterparts in government. you know what, that's happening in some places. we have a framework under the

national infrastructure protection plan that allows government and industry to work together, councils across the 18 sectors, information sharing and analysis centers that every day are doing good work about sharing threat invulnerability information. we need to leverage those relationships that we have built an invested time and resources over the. of their existence and utilize information. >> gautham nagesh. >> we spoke about the need for information sharing. frankly, some legislation move in the house in the near future. however, speaking to the d.h. as a portion that has been proposed in the white house and senate plan, what do you propose be on the information sharing be substituted for some sort of regulation, in other words, how can the federal government be sure that critical parts of the infrastructure are being protected without implementing some sort of regulation? >> there are parts of the senate

bill that i think. there is a section that talks about the sector by sector risk assessment. excuse me. firsthand knowledge of work that has been done in the information technology and communications sectors to conduct such sector white risk assessments. it's more a function and asset. but all 18 sectors of the critical infrastructure, some type of risk assessment. working with our partners in the collaborative way, identify gaps , the protective measures the begin recommend across the members of the sectors, and where are the gaps that require research and development of? these are things that we can be doing together, so i think that's a good part, and that like it, and it talks to the broader range of the risk that we need to try and manage with the drilling down and telling individual companies the things

that they need to do to manage risk in their own environment. >> but under that suggestion if a company were to have gaps in their protection identified and they were not able to address either from cost issues which have been cited by industry, or other reasons, what can the government do should it be up to the company to leave their systems open to attack if they decide that the risk outweighs the cost? >> let's remember these companies want to stay in business. staying in business depends on the reputation and reputation includes stability. so companies will make those kinds of investments, in some cases, particularly small business, they often times don't know what they should be investing in. low-cost or no cost items that they could be doing to try and help improve their protection profile. that is a place we can help. the small business administration could be engaged in this with us. the internal revenue service have been dismal with citizens all the time. lots of things we can be doing

together. >> mr. dix, in your testimony right in today's increasingly connected world cloud computing in the explosion and the proliferation of mobile devices and applications mean that we must be able to rely on the resilience of the network more than ever? does this change the equation -- expanding use of a cloud and also that the mobile proliferation? >> a perfect example of what was talking about, technology moving rapidly, and every time it changes the adversary changes. the modus operandi when he to be nimble and fast. remove the cloud and the ritualization. responding to the demands of the users. the increase in data, video, voice, demanding that we have this ritualist ability that is the next generation, as i mentioned earlier, computing,

storage, networking is changing to be able to deal with the scale and the requirements of the big dated. so we need to protect it. actually, i think that we have a greater opportunity with cloud to be able to be more secure. this is what we need to be able to innovate instead of and not spend our time, resources, and attention complying with the regulatory regime. >> so, does this issue stop at our nation's borders, and could more regulation in your view make us less economically competitive? >> that is part of the problem. this really is an economic issue and is about u.s. competitiveness, no, it does not stop the border. this is a borderless challahs, global challenge, and u.s.-based companies around the burro have to deal with laws and regulations and requirements in other countries as well. so we need to be cognitive of that in whatever steps that we take and make sure that we are thinking about that in a global context in. >> the vice-president of juniper networks, and coming up next we will talk with bill connor,

president and ceo of a company called entrust. he also testified before the cyber security subcommittee. on your screen is bill connor, president and ceo of a dallas-based company called entrust. what is entrust, and what do you do? >> this offer security company that focuses on protecting identities and information. so about half our business is with governments around the world, so everything from your passport has our technology in it to protect your personal information. some of the next generation passports in europe and other places. here in washington, an example, if you're a government employee year physiological access card uses our technology to protect that and enable it. secure e-mail to the client and content as well as fraud

detection which is what i was talking today in the committee meeting about. >> she did testify in a server security hearing today. what was your message to the members of congress? >> we are trying to make it simple. several security is a little complex and mark to see until you see the money leave your account. and the question is, what do you do? what is it and what candidates? what i need to provide is an example, which is when small business, and so i to blame how that happens, how it is perpetrated, and then what small businesses can do with technology available today a little bit wider. the issues in public. the co-chair of the public-private partnership. so we will experience a few steps on the back in terms of

that experience. >> the obama administration came out with the cedras security proposal last year. congress is now looking at actual legislation. what is it about that proposal that you agree with and where do you disagree? >> i won't talk about obama. less talk about the legislation. at the the issue is we need to be more and focused. this is intended to the issue. the governments give you the best government protecting identities. we have to take that and make it useful for businesses in how they use that. second is in public/private sharing when i cochaired, you can i share information. a security company that is used for protection, and i go talk to the people that work on cyber threats. it's a one-way