GAO: Cybersecurity Threats 'Growing'
| Tue May. 5, 2009 11:44 AM PDT
The Government Accountability Office released a report Tuesday concluding critical federal information systems are "not sufficiently protected to consistently thwart cyber threats," which are "evolving and growing."
According to the GAO, a majority of those threats come in the form of unauthorized access and improper use, from people who fall into several categories: Foreign spies, thieves, hackers, "hacktivists"—people who engage in "politically motivated" attacks on the Web to "send a political message"—terrorists and, "disgruntled insiders."
Reported incidents of attempted and successful security breaches have more than tripled since 2006, to more than 16,000, all while the GAO has, over the last several years, submitted "hundreds of recommendations to [federal] agencies...to fully implement information security programs."
The failure to completely enact those security programs has left 20 "major agencies" with "inadequate information system controls over financial systems," according to the report. The GAO also cited cybersecurity "vulnerabilities" at the Tennessee Valley Authority, which controls more than 50 nuclear, hydroelectric and fossil fuel power plants, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the US's nuclear weapons research sites.
Last month, Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced a bill that would give the President and the Secretary of Commerce broad powers to shut down internet traffic in the case of a cyber threat. Without such action, Snowe said the US would risk experiencing a "cyber-Katrina." The bill, the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, was referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which has yet to vote on it.
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Comments
Power To The People -- NOT!
Submitted by Crow T. Robot (not verified) on Tue May. 5, 2009 1:34 PM PDT.
Great.
Yet another move to give powers to the executive branch, over, above and beyond what the Constitution (the Nation's Highest Law) stipulates.
You can't say this administration hasn't learned a thing or two from the previous one, now can you?
So imagine for a moment that America elects, in the future, a Bush-Clone only worse (I know, I know..., but you'd have said a "Dubya" couldn't happen 9 years ago..., wouldn't ya'?). And imagine for a moment what someone like that might choose to designate as a significant "threat" to the nation's "cyber security"..., (like maybe too many bloggers being too harshly critical of El Presidente', for instance?)
Now ask yourself this question: Given what you've seen come out of recent Congresses, and given the number of ways that their rushed-through, un-read and practically un-debated bills have managed to go wildly askew from what we were told they were aiming at, do you think there are likely to be adequate safeguards built in to this bill to prevent it's being abused by such an administration, even if the Supreme Court allows that such powers, unspecified by the Constitution, are OK for the Executive to assume?
No wonder they're trying to scare the pants off the public with phraseology like "Cyber Katrina", as they push the thing. Without the Fear Factor, we might just take a minute to consider the potential consequences of enacting the thing, rather than just buying into the Fear pitch, and assuming only the best will come of it.
Whoops
Submitted by JRobs (not verified) on Tue May. 5, 2009 1:47 PM PDT.
Nice...so instead of putting forward a bill that funnels some of that defense spending into an arena that would actually make this country safer, our elected representatives instead choose to float a bill that would give the president a kill switch for the Internet. Good call.
