Experts: Next President Must Make Cybersecurity a Priority

So far, cybersecurity hasn't been on the candidates' election radar

By Jaikumar Vijayan, Computerworld

October 23, 2008 — CSO —

In an election season dominated by concerns over the economy and the war in Iraq, cybersecurity hasn't exactly been a top issue for the candidates or voters.

But it's a topic the next administration will need to focus on - and as a high priority, according to several tech industry representatives, including two former officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and a former White House cybersecurity czar.

Driving that urgency is the growing danger of cyberattacks against critical networks and systems that run the financial services and energy sectors, as well as those used by the government and the military. Those attacks could come from opportunistic nation-states as well as from criminal adversaries, they said.

"There is not a doubt in my mind that the time for action, and dramatic action, is now," said Amit Yoran, former director of the National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) of the DHS and now CEO of NetWitness Corp. "Without a comprehensive national cybersecurity initiative, things are going to end up in a very bad way."

Among the areas needing immediate attention, according to Yoran and others, are a greater focus on public-/private-sector collaboration, more transparency around an unfolding multibillion-dollar cybersecurity initiative announced earlier this year by President Bush, greater security research and development investments, and more direct involvement by the White House.

The task of protecting critical infrastructure targets against attacks was spelled out earlier this year by DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff as an issue with national security implications. It's a topic that has been the focus of attention since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has resulted in enormous investments to - and changes in - the nation's cyberdefenses.

The biggest of these was the decision to tap the DHS to lead the nation's cybersecurity efforts and the launching of the mostly classified Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative by President Bush in January. How successful those efforts have been remains in doubt; Chertoff himself acknowledged that five years after the DHS was created, the nation remained dangerously vulnerable to electronic attacks from those looking to wreak the same kind of havoc on networks as the 9-11 attacks did on New York and Washington.

As a result, it is critical for the next administration "to continue the efforts that this government has already started," said Ken Silva, chief technology officer at VeriSign Inc. "This is one of the few times that we are here, this close to an election, when we know the current administration is going to change, and yet none of the cyberinitiatives have been scaled back" or dropped, Silva said.

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