Cyber-Security Getting More Attention From Obama Administration, Other Gov’t Officials

Yesterday afternoon, the Obama administration passed along a legislative proposal to Congress on the topic of cyber-security. With plenty of recent press coverage, cyber-security is getting plenty of attention following Epsilon, Sony, and far too many other data breaches. The President’s administration is responding to a Congressional call on how to best legislate the nation’s cyber-security needs.

The President’s proposal (.pdf) includes three main points, stressing the importance of cyber-security to the United States. Taking the highlights from the announcement article on WhiteHouse.gov:

1. The Administration proposal helps safeguard your personal data and enhances your right to know when it has been compromised.
2. It helps protect our national security by addressing threats to our power grids, water systems, and other critical infrastructure.
3. It helps the U.S. government protect our federal networks, while creating stronger privacy and civil liberties protections that keep pace with technology.

With everything from Sony’s breach to WikiLeaks to Anonymous DDoSing major corporations to China hacking Google, other corporations, and military contractors, the US government needs to be up to speed and taking a pro-active approach to cyber-security threats. As we saw in the war game played last February, Cyber Shockwave, with a cyber attack as the central theme – we lost and lost hard.

For more information on the President’s cyber-security proposal, you can read the Cyber-security proposal fact sheet or read the letters regarding the proposal (go to May 12th) directed to the Department of Homeland Security, House of Representatives, and Senate which includes law enforcement provisions, data breach notification, regulatory framework, and the complete cyber-security proposal (.pdf). The administration would also like to point out its cyber-security accomplishments (.pdf) as well.

In other related news, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and FCC chairman Julius Genachowski will be participating in a roundtable discussion on cyber-security along with representatives from Symantec and McAfee on Monday. If anything significant comes out of this discussion, more on that next week.