Fergie's Tech Blog

Schneier: Who Should be in Charge of U.S. Cybersecurity?

Bruce Schneier:

U.S. government cybersecurity is an insecure mess, and fixing it is going to take considerable attention and resources. Trying to make sense of this, President Barack Obama ordered a 60-day review of government cybersecurity initiatives. Meanwhile, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, Science and Technology is holding hearings on the same topic.

One of the areas of contention is who should be in charge. The FBI, DHS and DoD -- specifically, the NSA -- all have interests here. Earlier this month, Rod Beckström resigned from his position as director of the DHS's National Cybersecurity Center, warning of a power grab by the NSA.

Putting national cybersecurity in the hands of the NSA is an incredibly bad idea. An entire parade of people, ranging from former FBI director Louis Freeh to Microsoft's Trusted Computing Group Vice President and former Justice Department computer crime chief Scott Charney, have told Congress the same thing at this month's hearings.

Cybersecurity isn't a military problem, or even a government problem -- it's a universal problem. All networks, military, government, civilian and commercial, use the same computers, the same networking hardware, the same Internet protocols and the same software packages. We all are the targets of the same attack tools and tactics. It's not even that government targets are somehow more important; these days, most of our nation's critical IT infrastructure is in commercial hands. Government-sponsored Chinese hackers go after both military and civilian targets.

posted by Fergie @ 4/03/2009 12:44:00 AM