Information Security News: Public, private sectors at odds over cyber security

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-security26-2008aug26,0,2021258.story

By Joseph Menn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 26, 2008

Three very big and very different computer security breaches that have 
dominated recent headlines did more than show how badly the Internet 
needs major repairs. They also exposed the huge rift between corporate 
America and the federal government over who should fix it, 
cyber-security experts say.

In the last few months, law enforcement officials cracked an 
international ring that tapped customer databases and trafficked in tens 
of millions of credit card numbers; a researcher uncovered a major flaw 
that permits hackers to steer some Web surfers to fake versions of 
popular websites filled with malicious software; and computer assaults, 
which some researchers said they had traced back to Russia's state-run 
telecommunications firms, crippled websites belonging to the country of 
Georgia.

Yet the episodes did little to boost cyber security higher on the 
agendas of the federal government or the two major presidential 
candidates.

"Nothing is happening," said Jerry Dixon, the former director of the 
National Cyber Security Division at the Department of Homeland Security. 
"This has got to be in the top five national security priorities."

Dixon is just one of hundreds of technology executives and experts who 
have been saying for years that Washington needs to do much more to 
protect consumers, businesses and the government itself from attacks by 
criminal hackers and those supported by rival nations.

[...]


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