|
|
We all know that the threat of cyber attack is growing dramatically (don’t we?), and that the most urgent duty of government is to protect the populace (isn’t it?) Assuming that’s the case, how are we to explain the recent collapse of an effort to pass essential cybersecurity legislation? And what, if anything, can be done about it?
|
|
On Friday of last week, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced that just such an Executive Order is "close to completion," although reportedly some issues remain to be addressed. If the Executive Order does issue, it would be expected to apply to the same types of critical infrastructure as the Cybersecurity Act - power plants, utilities, pipelines, transportation and telecommunications networks, hospitals and other systems essential to every day life.
But how do you mandate the voluntary development of standards? Or, stated another way, what if you gave a standards development project and nobody came?
Full Story |
Security is a distributed problem, not a centralized one. Having dictates passed down from On High is not secure. At best it's irrelevant to what people are already doing. At worst, it creates a monoculture where a zero-date exploit will get the malefactor great access to everyone at the same time.
Private computer security is outside the scope and range of government anyway. It's private. Let them see to their own house, where they ought to all be using SELinux anyway.