A cyber risk to the U.S.
IN A RECENT briefing to Congress about worldwide threats, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said that the danger of cyberattacks will equal or surpass the danger of terrorism “in the foreseeable future.” What makes that assessment particularly alarming is that the United States may be as unprepared to defend some of its critical computer systems as it was to protect New York and Washington against al-Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001.
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Congress and the Obama administration have at least recognized the problem: Both have spent years studying it and have drawn up detailed proposals for hardening U.S. cyberdefenses. Like so much in Washington, action has been slowed by political gridlock; yet senior legislators in both parties have committed themselves to passing legislation. In fact, cyberdefense could be a signature achievement of this election year, if a few more senators can set aside partisanship and special interest appeals.
The most important — or at least, the biggest — legislation is emerging in the Senate under the sponsorship of Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) and Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.). It is packed with provisions and updates to outdated legislation, but its most important sections would provide for information sharing by the government and private companies and mandate better security for critical infrastructure. (A couple of overreaching provisions in earlier legislation, such as authority for the president to shut down Internet traffic in a crisis, have been dropped.)
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Cooperation between the government and private companies is also badly needed to ensure protection of power and water plants, banking networks, and other infrastructure essential to modern society. The Senate legislation rightly gives the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), rather than the Pentagon, authority in this area and lays out an appropriately narrow definition of computer systems to be supervised: those whose interruption could cause “a mass casualty event”; “the interruption of life-sustaining services;” “mass evacuations”; or “catastrophic economic damage to the United States.”
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-cyber-risk-to-the-us/2012/02/07/gIQA4q7M9Q_story.html
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Sharing information is the most important thing? I don't get it.
Something about this article feels like someone doesn't really understand the problem.