Obama's Cybersecurity Push: What It Means for CIOs
President Obama aims to fix U.S. cybersecurity, but can the feds hit a moving target? Not without private sector support and practical solutions.
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"That would bring us back to checklists again," he predicts, as companies could scramble to meet minimum requirements by a deadline rather than plan a larger, longer-term strategy.
Short-term thinking is a national problem, agrees Spafford. Banks please shareholders quarter by quarter. Carmakers can't think much beyond the current model. And look what happened to those industries. To average citizens, cybersecurity is less pressing on any given day than paying the mortgage, keeping or finding a job and avoiding swine flu. Obama has to make cyberpolicy urgent enough to overcome "the real world," as Spafford puts it. Spafford and other security experts praise Obama for bringing attention to the digital world upon which the United States so depends. But Obama's report, which urges government and industry to work together to unify security practices and metrics, espouses nothing new. They're hoping, rather, for inspiration to reach new heights.
"We need high-intensity, long-term development efforts," Spafford says. "Think of the Manhattan Project or the space race. We need that in cybersecurity."
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