Capitol Hill is Moving on Cyber Security Bill

<![CDATA[ Will government intervention help reduce the number of security attacks on our nation’s infrastructure or is the proposed Cyber Security Act too restrictive on private business causing forced transparency of operations and raised costs? The Cyber Security Act 2012 Bill has been floating around for months and is now backed by President Obama. Sen. Joe Lieberman has stated that the Senate will consider the bill by weeks end. We revisit a previous standpoint detailed in Forbes earlier this year in light of this recent movement. There are several reasons why an increased bureaucratic push for compliance might not be good for business. A large concern for organizations is to be mandated to disclose that their asset data has been compromised. In a recent Cyber Security Watch Survey, 70 percent of insider incidents are handled internally without legal action. Companies want to maintain a reputation as well as avoid the public eye at all costs. It’s much easier to deal with internal controversy without a media frenzy causing the microscope to land on your security practices. More often now, executive management teams mistake well-planned and executed information security architecture with satisfaction of compliance and regulatory statutes. Unfortunately, this approach often falls short. Nonetheless, having great security practices don’t always mean compliance and vice versa. Satisfying compliance and regulatory mandates to the letter may still leave organizations vulnerable to security breaches. In order to curb hackers from penetrating critical infrastructure, the government needs to focus on leveraging its vast resources to drive a new architecture of security, product research and development. This can be achieved by advocating software and systems that are needed to protect us – such as protection from the accidental insider, the government stands a much better chance of protecting our nation’s critical assets. The most dangerous security risk “cocktail” that every corporation needs to address is the combination of critical vulnerabilities and over-privileged accounts on corporate assets.