obama
Pressure mounts for naming of a White House cybersecurity adviser with clout
April 15, 2009
Word is that Melissa Hathaway’s 60-day review of U.S. cybersecurity policy will hit President Obama’s desk this Friday, April 17. Precisely when the White House makes it public will be an indicator of how high a priority this is with Obama, who certainly has his plate full with a few other weighty matters.
A leak of the executive summary of Hathaway’s review sometime in the next 48 hours — in …More
Q&A on U.S. electrical grid infiltrated by Chinese, Russian cyberspies
April 9, 2009
The Wall Street Journal’s scoop that Chinese and Russian cyberspies have established deep footholds inside the networks that control the U.S. electrical grid ties directly into the 60-day review of U.S. cybersecurity policy due to be delivered any day to the White House.
Proving investigative journalism is still viable, WSJ reporter Siobahn Gorman cajoled unnamed U.S. intelligence officials to describe …More
Senate bill mandates strong federal role to make Internet safer
April 3, 2009
Sen. John Rockefeller and Sen. Olympia Snowe this week introduced proposed cybersecurity legislation that would create a cabinet-level cybersecurity advisor reporting directly to President Obama — and also create extraordinary powers to enable the federal government to take over leadership in making the Internet safer.
This comes with word expected any day now from Melissa Hathaway, the management consultant tasked by President Obama to conduct a 60-day review of U.S. cybersecurity …More
‘Cyberinvaders’ crack into Sen. Bill Nelson’s staff PCs — twice
March 20, 2009
Cyberinvaders, as a peeved Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. called them today, continue cracking into U.S. government systems with impunity.
Nelson, who serves on the Senate Intelligence, Armed Services and Finance committees, has just issued a statement disclosing that criminal hackers twice this month cracked into two PC workstations used by three of his key staffers. No classified information was kept on the breached PCs, which were used by Nelson’s foreign-policy aide, …More
The cybersecurity mess on the White House front steps
March 16, 2009
Special to Threatpost
by Byron Acohido (LastWatchdog.com)
March 16, 2009, 7:55 AM
If President Obama thinks fixing the broken U.S. economy is a challenge, and ending the ground wars in the Middle East a conundrum, wait until he gets around to tackling cybersecurity.
Obama must reverse the abject lack of any sort of meaningful coordinated defense against intensifying and overlapping cyber attacks on U.S. citizens, businesses, schools, hospitals, governments and military from unseen …More
Beckstrom Q&A: Cybersecurity official explains how he was hamstrung by NSA
March 9, 2009
The sudden resignation of Rod A. Beckstrom, the Department of Homeland Security’s senior official tasked with unifying the federal government’s cybersecurity intiatives, bodes ill for a new age of transparency and collaborative problem-solving in government. Beckstrom was unable to maneuver around, much less partner with, the powerful National Security Agency (NSA).
In this stunningly frank March 5th resignation letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, Beckstrom, Director of the National …More
Lack of transparency surrounding data breaches not a good thing
March 4, 2009
In trying to secretly clean up after the series of data breaches of payment card processing companies, Visa and MasterCard are making ineffectual the data- loss disclosure laws on the books in more than 30 states. These hard-won laws were intended to put pressure on companies and organizations to be more accountable for sensitive consumer data they collect and store. In a recent Last Watchdog interview, John …More