On August 30th, 2012, Chris Strohm reported for Bloomberg Businessweek about the possibility of an executive order or Presidential directive addressing cybersecurity. When cybersecurity legislation floundered earlier this summer, a few people floated the idea of President Obama issuing an executive order to achieve the same effect. The Bloomberg article expands on that idea and mentions that a draft document is being circulated throughout the administration. The draft document apparently calls for information sharing between DHS, DOD, the intel agencies, and critical infrastructure companies. Moreover, DHS would defend federal non-military networks while coordinating the defense of private-sector networks. Strohm noted that it is unclear just how much power DHS would have in telling private sector companies to get cracking. There’s more to the plan, so take a look at the article.
Obviously this isn’t the final product, but it all sounds so underwhelming. Back in January, I was naively excited about the prospect of cybersecurity legislation. Now I’m jaded, consigned to the fact that whatever remedy we choose (be it watered down bill or executive order), it won’t be enough. Hopefully this plan would give DHS the power to institute some type of mandatory standard.
You can find that Bloomberg source article here.
Along the same lines, Computerworld reports about a letter from Sen. Feinstein urging President Obama to issue the executive order.
Leave a Reply