In his keynote at the RSA Conference on Tuesday held in San Francisco, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff underlined the work federal cyber-security officials are putting into developing a strong defense system to protect national security interests from cyber-attacks that could turn disastrous for the United States.

Chertoff made an analogy with the Manhattan Project, which was the project to develop world’s first nuclear bomb during World War II, this time in terms of creating an efficient system capable of issuing warnings of any incoming cyber-attack attempt, and highlighted the necessity of the new National Cyber Security Center, which will be headed by Rod Beckstrom.

The idea of early warnings about incoming attacks would be great if it could be transposed into reality. For now, the only thing the cyber security system can do is warn about attacks that already took place, which is not very efficient. Chertoff didn’t give up much details on how exactly the defense system will work, but he admitted to this being a very difficult task.

In his keynote, Chertoff said: “The human and economic sacrifices from a cyber-attack can be devastating […] It’s going to be hard. It’s hard technically. It’s hard because it requires working together,” which means it is high time to take action, before it is too late.

Chertoff gave as an example the 2007 Estonian situation, when a massive denial-of-service attack took place, saying that the “attack in Estonia shut down the government there for a period of time,” affecting it financially for a long period of time, a sign that any other country or government is vulnerable to attacks of this nature.

Referring to the Einstein program, which monitors security data and has been active ever since 2004, Chertoff said it is not flawless and still has a slow monitoring process, which decreases its effectiveness. He also expressed his hopes that the number of access points to federal domains will decrease from the thousands today to just 50 in a near future.