p2pnet - rss feed: DHS Cyber Security problems
p2pnet.net News Opinion:- Shortcomings in America’s Homeland Security National Cyber Security Division leave the US vulnerable to more than mere inconvenience to businesses and consumers, says an internal report from the department’s inspector general quoted in the Washington Post today.
“Cyber security cuts across all aspects of critical infrastructure protection,” said a DHS press release when news of the division’s creation was released last year.
“Most businesses in this country are unable to segregate the cyber operations from the physical aspects of their business because they operate interdependently,” it quotes secretary Tom Ridge as saying. “This new division will be focused on the vitally important task of protecting the nation’s cyber assets so that we may best protect the nation’s critical infrastructure assets.”
However, efforts to “battle computer-network and Internet attacks by hackers and other cyber-criminals suffer from a lack of coordination, poor communication and a failure to set priorities,” says The Washington Post here, going on:
“The division ‘must address these issues to reduce the risk that the critical infrastructure may fail due to cyber attacks,’ the report said. ‘The resulting widespread disruption of essential services after a cyber attack could delay the notification of emergency services, damage our economy and put public safety at risk’.”
Harris N. Miller, head of the Information Technology Association of America, is quoted as saying his group “continues to be concerned that DHS does not have adequate resources devoted to cyber-security and that the cyber-security head does not have adequate visibility within the bureaucracy. Improvements are coming, but slowly. The question is whether the nation can afford to wait”.
