Obamateurism of the Day

Obamateurism in the works:

CYBERSECURITY CZAR position is set up to take the fall for where the buck stops. A new czar took over the position at the end of the Bush administration. Obama plans to fill it with his own man? I wonder what budget changes Obama will redirect.

December 14, 2009
Spafford: It’s a position that’s going to report up to the economic council and the security council. It won’t have any statutory authority. It won’t have any budgetary authority. That does not give it much authority of any kind. The problem is that there are organizations in the government that have some part of the problem space, like DHS, Defense, the NSA. They have good people on it and they’re making headway. But the structure of the government response misses portions of the problem. It isn’t a coordinated effort and there’s no awareness of the magnitude of the problem. There’s certainly a recognition in the military that there needs to be a better response, and that’s what we’re seeing in the establishment of the cyber sub-command. That could be good. But a lot of it will depend on the managing authority. But it does show progress. The downside is that the military views the protection of military assets as their job and the protection of other assets is someone else’s job. They’re not going to protect the banks and the utilities and the telcos and the power grid and everything else. So whose job is it? Where’s the coordination and overall picture of how this works? So when I hear that there are supposedly people who have been interviewed for this cyber coordinator job and didn’t take it, I’m not surprised. It’s not a winning position. I’m not at all surprised by the fact that it’s empty. That position is a blame-taking position.

Fisher: The cybercrime problem seems to really have gotten out of control in the last year or so. As you said, there’s a lot of money involved these days. Obviously the FBI and other agencies are working on it, but it seems like the scope is too big for even them.

Spafford: Think about it in the context of the Mexican drug problem. A couple of years ago, Mexico didn’t have much of a problem because all of the drugs were going north and Mexico was just a conduit. Now, their whole police structure is compromised. They’re bringing in the army. They’re staging gun battles in the streets with drug gangs. They just allowed it to go on too long. And that’s a worry that many of us have [about cybercrime]. The problem is that you’re institutionalizing it and allowing a criminal element to get established. How far away might we be from a criminal group extorting a government for money? Who would be responsible for responding? It’s not a military problem. I don’t think people are weighing the cost benefit and are thinking in terms of these problems. How do we know this hasn’t been happening already? People are looking at narrow problems in their jurisdictions. No one looks at the big picture. They say it’s too expensive to address the whole problem or that these attacks can’t happen or won’t happen. None of those is a good answer.

Link below for the budget discussion.
Q&A: Eugene Spafford on Cybercrime, Security Research
By Dennis Fisher, Threatpost Editor
With Eugene Spafford of Purdue’s CERIUS Center

maverick muse on December 15, 2009 at 8:35 AM

4shoes

And Obama inherited Marxism from mummy, granny & grampy and polygamous alcoholic and sadistic daddy.

maverick muse on December 15, 2009 at 8:40 AM

Enoxo on December 15, 2009 at 8:30 AM

Mirror mirror on the wall…

Obama inherited Narcissus Oedipus nomen est omen.

maverick muse on December 15, 2009 at 8:48 AM