Cyber Threats Hare Raising

With the assessment by the GAO (glad someone's accountable) that the nation's information security is "at risk" from cyber threats, also comes an assessment on how difficult it is to do non-kinetic cyber activity, like shooting behind the rabbits.

Maj. Gen. William Lord, commander of the USAF Cyber Command (Provisional), statement that: it is easier to get approval to do a kinetic (read "bomb") strike with a 2,000 lb. bomb than it is for us to do a non-kinetic (no "boom!") cyber activity. Lord, who has been nominated to become the AF Chief of Warfighting Integration was speaking to an industry association recently.

The Cyberspace Policy Review is a 76-page report released with a White House announcement that the president will be creating a new cybersecurity office and czar, as well as a privacy and civil liberties official to oversee the government’s cybersecurity plans. The cybersecurity report provides a list of wide-ranging guidelines advising President Barack Obama on how the government should proceed in its national plan to secure cyberspace.

It touches on everything from establishing communication networks for emergency response teams to the role government should play in the protection of critical infrastructure networks and whether or not entities that experience a breach should have to notify governments and law enforcement agencies. Privacy and civil liberties concerns receive a repeated nod, with privacy being mentioned in the report more than five dozen times.