Obama Announces New Cybersecurity Initiative – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 0
On Friday May 29, 2009 President Obama announced that cyberscurity was going top be a priority. According to PCMAG.com:
“[The] cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation,” Obama said during a press conference at the White House. “It’s the great irony of our Information Age – the very technologies that empower us to create and to build also empower those who would disrupt and destroy.”
Despite recent progress at the federal level, the U.S. is not adequately prepared to battle current cyber security threats, Obama said. This is largely due to overlapping missions and lack of communication between federal agencies and with the private sector.
The full report can be found here.
The good:The administration recognizes the need for enhanced vigilance to address cybersecurity.
The bad: Just creating another bureaucracy does not guarantee results. The plan has little details. According to Computer World magazine, James Lewis, senior fellow of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who both praised and issued a note of caution on the announcement said:
While the goals in the report are worthwhile, it took the Obama administration longer than promised to deliver it, he said. While the report and accompanying Obama speech were “really strong,” the Obama administration will have to develop metrics to measure cybersecurity success and will have to prove it’s doing more than Bush’s administration did, Lewis said.
Lewis and other panelists pointed out that this is the fourth major presidential announcement on cybersecurity in the past dozen years, with former plans meeting limited success.
Also, creating needless layers of bureaucracy will put taxpayers at risk.
The Ugly:If the administration thinks that they can placate people’s concerns regarding cybersecurity with one announcement and some nice platitudes they can do more harm than good.
Cybersecurity and privacy will work together hand in hand. A government that is obsessed with compiling people’s personal information also needs to be obsessed with protecting that information.