U.S. making progress on cybersecurity

The U.S. government’s strategy for protecting the Internet and securing information systems has made progress, but the work is not done, a panel of experts said two days ago. Three years ago the Bush administration signed off on the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. The policy statement called for the government to work with private industry to create an emergency response system to cyberattacks and to reduce the US’ vulnerability to such threats. “We’re much stronger today than we have been ever in the past,” Howard Schmidt, independent security consultant who has served as cybersecurity adviser to the White House and security executive at Microsoft and eBay, said in a panel discussion at the RSA Conference in San Jose on Tuesday.

James Lewis, a director at the Washington, D.C.-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who also spoke, called for new cybercrime laws, in particular a cybercrime treaty drafted by the Council of Europe. He also called out the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure as vulnerable to attacks and said research should be done to prepare for the next generation of cyberattacks.

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