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Critics: Homeland Security unprepared for cyberthreats |
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Written by Daniel
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Wednesday, 17 September 2008 |
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Critics: Homeland Security unprepared for cyberthreats September 17, 2008 4:00 AM PDT
Posted by Stephanie Condon WASHINGTON--When politicians got together six years ago and decided to glue together a medley of federal agencies to create the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, one of the justifications was a better focus on cybersecurity.
"The department will gather and focus all our efforts to face the challenge of cyberterrorism," President Bush said when signing the 500-or-so-page bill into law in November 2002. "This department will be charged with encouraging research on new technologies that can detect these threats in time to prevent an attack."
That was then. Now, Homeland Security is weathering a deluge of criticism of its lackluster cybersecurity efforts on grounds that they have proven to be inefficient, bureaucratic, and not even able to do a decent job of monitoring federal computer networks.
This week, it even led to what would have been unthinkable a year or two ago--a suggestion that Homeland Security can no longer be trusted with its cybersecurity mission and it should be handed to another federal agency. [C/Net news....] [Comments...] |
