DHS Gets Low Marks

The color-coded alert system has proved useless.

Cybersecurity has become something of a standing joke inside DHS, a buried priority that was even rumored to be moving to the Office of Management and Budget, of all places. It’s also endured the departure of several appointees who left after only a few months, including Richard Clarke, Howard Schmidt and Amit Yoran. It seems DHS’s attitude toward information security is reflected in our respondents’ perception of how the agency has handled it. More respondents rated DHSs handling of information security as “poor” than those who rated it “excellent” and “good” combined. DHS is also under pressure from Congress and other critics to either radically change or altogether scrap the color-coded alert system, and the numbers suggest that that’s the right move in terms of infosec, since it hardly registeredeven with critical infrastructure companieswhen the feds declared Orange Alerts.