ie8 fix
madison

Zero Day

Ryan Naraine, Emil Protalinski and Dancho Danchev

Think tank releases cybersecurity roadmap for Obama administration

By | December 9, 2008, 9:47am PST

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a D.C. based think tank, has released their recommendations for a national cybersecurity policy for the incoming presidential administration. The policy guidelines, if implemented, will have a significant impact on the software landscape that reaches far beyond the borders of federal employment and purchasing.

The majority of the report discusses changes to the bureaucratic structure of the government to streamline decision making as well as defining an official and stated military policy for defending cyberspace for the purposes of deterrence. Two of their policy recommendations, namely the use of the government’s purchasing power for improving information security as well as development of a standardized strong identity management system, will both be “good things” for everyone in government and industry alike.

One of the most effective tools we have as a society in making the world bend to our will is economic policy. We can use price pressures and tax breaks to coerce people to do many things, such as drive less, emit less carbon, and save for retirement. If a major party in an economic system makes a unilateral decision to only purchase products of a certain quality, then the entire market will be forced to adopt the product. A government mandate that requires software to be of a certain quality and contain a minimum of defects, defined by a standard metric, will raise the quality of software for the entire industry.

Identity management and verification systems used on the Internet are a collection of ad-hoc solutions that were implemented out of necessity without much thought towards design and maintenance. Answering the questions “who is behind this network traffic” or “should I allow this TCP session to continue” provide no definitive answers as the decision trees used to answer these questions usually terminates before we can positively identify the root-cause actors. Without being able to make such an identification, correct identification of a spammer behind a webmail system or a user on a social network is incredibly difficult.

Even if you don’t sell directly to the government, you should read this report as policies based upon this report will have an impact on your information security work.

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

Topics

Adam J. O'Donnell, Ph.D. is an R&D engineer who has focused on computer security since 2000.

Disclosure

Adam O'Donnell

Adam J. O’Donnell currently works for Cloudmark, a messaging security company whose clients include the majority of the Tier 1 customer-facing service providers as well as mobile carriers and social networks. He serves on the advisory committee for the SOURCE Security Conference, as well as several conference technical program committees. Many of his close friends work in the security industry, and he will disclose those relationships as he deems it necessary.

Biography

Adam O'Donnell

Adam J. O'Donnell, Ph.D. is an R&D engineer who has focused on computer security since 2000. He currently is the Director of Emerging Technologies at Cloudmark, a messaging security company located in San Francisco.

Adam early on mastered the art of writing in complete sentences, using both hands and one foot. Later, he learned to do so with each individually. After fourteen years of apprenticeship in the mist-covered hills of central Nepal, Dr. O'Donnell emerged an unparalleled digital warrior and in desperate need of a anti-fungal wash.

Approaching both life and enterprise security with the verve of a particular capuchin, he is respected the world over as an observer of all he sees. Adam's dry blade of analysis will sever the hard candy shell surrounding most technical security concepts, and significantly goo-ify the remaining so as to be consumable in small bites with sufficiently large servings of digestive aids. Just what the doctor ordered.

Related Discussions on TechRepublic

Did you know you can take part in these discussions with your ZDNet membership?
1
Comments

Join the conversation!

Well done! Thank you very much for professional templates and community edition
seslisohbet seslichat

Join the conversation!

Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]
ie8 fix
Click Here
ie8 fix

The best of ZDNet, delivered

ZDNet Newsletters

Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox

Facebook Activity

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources
ie8 fix
ie8 fix