Cybersecurity and You!

It seems that I’ve been focusing a lot on security and fraud on microblogging sites. However, there is more online than microblogging sites, despite my attraction to the concept. As a way of approaching cybersecurity, I finished reading the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency final report. It is an extremely long and thorough report of the state of cybersecurity and the need to protect this environment from those who seek to do harm. The main punchline from the report is the need for the next President of the United States to create a comprehensive national security strategy for cyberspace because, quoting from the report, “cybersecurity is now a major national security problem for the United States.”

This analysis would seem to be a fair assessment as both McCain and Obama had their networks hacked while they were both campaigning to become president. Some have rightly criticized the argument that the rest of the American digital public needs a form of digital ID to protect their online interest as a waste of resources and a failure to recognize how cybercriminals work. I would make the argument that these recommendations fail to address the need to educate the general public on how to protect themselves and the organizations that they care about/work for/whatever. To address the broad policy issues without address how these recommendations would be foolish.

The only point of educating the public is a plan of creating an education plan through the National Science Foundation (NSF). While the NSF has done great work in the past and present in educating the role of science to the American public, I do not believe that the NSF is up to the task of this size. If the NSF is the only federal organization responsible for educating laypeople who may or may not be computer literate, this project will be a huge failure. I do not have a great recommendation on who else currently could help the NSF. The report does mention private-public partnerships. I believe the government should create a new operational organization to help the general public deal with the issues caused by cybercrime and the influx of new technology. The focus of education must go beyond the infrastructure of the bureaucracy of the U.S. Government and must approach the general public. If it stays in the ivory tower of Washington D.C., it will hurt us all.