After WikiLeaks, White House tackles 'insider threat'

The U.S. government is finally scrambling to catch up to the "insider threat" that led to the WikiLeaks embarrassment.

The New York Times is reporting that the White House will issue an executive order later today to replace a flawed patchwork of computer security safeguards exposed by the WikiLeaks disclosure of hundreds of thousands of classified government documents.

From the article:

The directive enshrines many stopgap fixes that the Pentagon, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency made immediately after the initial WikiLeaks disclosures last November. Since then, for instance, the military has disabled 87 percent of its computers to prevent people from downloading classified data onto memory sticks, CDs or DVDs.

The Pentagon has also developed procedures to monitor and detect suspicious behavior on classified computer systems.

The White House order is expected to include the creation of a task force led by the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to combat leaks from government workers.

I will also establish a special government committee that must submit a report to the president within 90 days, and then at least once a year after that, assessing federal successes and failures in protecting classified information on government computer networks.