[Infowarrior] - House Passes Cybersecurity Bill

[Richard Forno]

House Passes Cybersecurity Bill
By JANIE LORBER
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/house-passes-cybersecurity-bill/
February 4, 2010

Update | 12:46 p.m. The House today overwhelmingly passed a bill  
aimedat building up the United States’ cybersecurity army and  
expertise, amid growing alarm over the country’s vulnerability online.

The bill, which passed 422-5, requires the Obama administration to  
conduct an agency-by-agency assessment of cybersecurity workforce  
skills and establishes a scholarship program for undergraduate and  
graduate students who agree to work as cybersecurity specialists for  
the government after graduation.

As officials puzzle over how to defend the nation from enemies that  
are often impossible to pinpoint, the lawmakers behind the bill said  
education and recruitment are crucial.

“Investing in cybersecurity is the Manhattan Project of our  
generation,” Representative Michael Arcuri, Democrat of New York, a  
sponsor of the bill said on the House floor Wednesday. “But this time  
around we are facing far greater threat. Nearly every high school  
hacker has the potential to hamper our unfettered access to the  
Internet. Just imagine what a rogue state could do.”

Mr. Arcuri said that the federal government will need to hire between  
500 and 1,000 more “cyber warriors” each year to keep up with  
potential enemies. Troops online “are every bit as important to our  
security as a soldier in our field,” he said.

The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act, H.R. 4061, a major information  
security bill, closely follows a warning by Dennis Blair, the director  
of National Intelligence, who told lawmakers this week that computer- 
related attacks were becoming increasingly malicious.

The government’s four-year review of Defense Department strategies,  
also issued this week, stated that large-scale cyberattacks could  
massively disable or hurt international financial, commercial and  
physical infrastructure.

Mr. Obama has said cybersecurity is one of his top priorities and  
between the fallout from the attack on Google’s computers in January  
and the more modest hacking of Web sites of 49 House members and  
committees last week, the risk is felt acutely in Washington.

Still, the budget proposal the administration delivered to Congress  
Monday cut funding for the Homeland Security Department’s  
cybersecurity division.

There is no companion bill in the Senate, but senators are working on  
several unrelated information security bills.

The bill is based on a review of Mr. Obama’s review of cyberspace  
policies across the federal government in May, 2009. It authorizes one  
single entity, the director of the National Institute of Standards and  
Technology, to represent the government in negotiations over  
international standards and orders the White House office of  
technology to convene a cybersecurity university-industry task force  
to guide the direction of future research.

It also directs the National Science Foundation to research the social  
and behavioral aspects of cybersecurity, like how people interact with  
their computers and manage their online identities, in order to  
establish a new, more accessible awareness and education campaign.