What's Happening in Information Security

For those of you that get up everyday thinking about enterprise security management systems and the challenge of protecting information assets you can imagine the pressure that Howard Schmidt must be feeling. Warren Axelrod wraps up the series on Howard Schmidt in the final post of the series. 

From the desk of Warren Axelrod:  Howard Schmidt has had the experience of evangelizing The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, which was published in February 2003. I attended one of the many town hall meetings that he conducted. It was a brave attempt, but the Bush Administration did not give the strategy the support needed to effect the changes outlined in the report. I believe that this lesson may well have been learned and hope that this time around there will be support from the top.

From my personal experience of the past 15 years, during which I testified before Congress on cyber security, co-founded the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), participated in the development of the FSSCC (Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security) Research Agenda for the Banking and Finance Sector, and have been active in a number of public-private-academic initiatives, the task is much greater than merely developing a plan and trying to persuade various players to collaborate in effecting that plan.

With some 85 percent of the critical infrastructure claimed to be in private hands, we need to effect programs in which the private sector will do their full share in protecting the infrastructure. Moral suasion will only go so far. It needs resources and commitment to get it done. Yes, we need to rebuild much of the decaying physical infrastructure, but we should be spending much more of the government’s “Stimulus Package” on the cyber side. This will also create jobs, as Andy Kessler so well points out in his Op-Ed piece, with the title “Put Down That Shovel,” which appeared in the December 26-27, 2009 issue of The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Kessler suggests increasing the reach of the country’s wireless networks, laying more fiber cables, and the like. He does not mention cyber security efforts that would provide the protection and resiliency that we need to continue to prosper in a virtual world. But I would certainly add it to the list … at the top!

My hopes and expectations are that Howard Schmidt understands all of these issues and, through his experience (both positive and negative), knows how to get things done. He needs President Obama’s direct, active and strong support to implement measures that may well be unpopular and will certainly be costly. But we can no longer afford to be reactive, because we know for sure that the hackers are already working on the next version of attack.

Howard has a difficult and arduous set of tasks ahead of him. He brings to it both successful and failed attempts to get the job done. He has surely learned from these and understands what does and does not work. It is so important that he gets total support from every involved constituency and that he is given the opportunity to pull it all together and make it happen. We all owe him this … and we owe it to ourselves. 

What do you want to tell Howard Schmidt - comment here.