Security Watch | Matt Hines » CSIA goads feds to move faster on data sec

September 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

CSIA goads feds to move faster on data sec

TAGS: Security

The Cyber Security Industry Alliance is clearly tired of waiting for the United States government to move forward and employ its significant powers to expand the nation's IT defenses.

The nonprofit industry group -- which counts a number of large security technology vendors among its members, including CA, F-Secure, IBM, PGP, Qualys, RSA and Symantec -- is renewing its call for "swift Congressional action" to secure the nation's IT infrastructure "in light of the growing evidence and increased recognition that our government and economic systems are at risk from cyber attack."

The CSIA is using President Bush's own comments as proof that legislators need to do something fast to lock down national networks to stave off outside threats.

Presenting at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit this week, Bush admitted: "I'm very aware that a lot of our systems are vulnerable to cyber-attack from a variety of places."

Boy, the depth of that insight is really mind-blowing isn't it? The president was also forced to apologize after referring to the economic hoedown as the "OPEC Summit." Brilliant!

CSIA President Tim Bennett added his support for the President's comments and said that he hopes the federal set not only bent on securing its own infrastructure -- which has been repeatedly detailed as woefully lacking in recent months, including in reports made by the Department of Homeland Security regarding its own problems in locking-down internal IT systems -- but for private industry and end users as well.

"CSIA's concern applies equally to both our economic and national security as both private and public sector information systems have proven vulnerable to cyber incidents," Bennett said.

CSIA is specifically calling for Congress to get off the fence on improving national data security laws, although some state officials would prefer that they are allowed to craft and enforce their own provisions, such as with the landmark California 1386 data breach reporting law.

"CSIA strongly urges Congress to pass a federal law requiring business and government to (1) establish and maintain a data privacy and security program to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of personal information, and (2) establish uniform notification requirements when a security breach presents a risk of harm to consumers," the group said in a statement.

While earmarking the state laws as "good intentioned," CSIA contends that the measures in some cases don't have enough teeth and in others have left businesses and consumers confused with their individual requirements.

"The time has arrived for Congress to take action to protect consumers by establishing national standards for data protection and breach notice requirements. Passing data security legislation would be an important step in what must be a comprehensive response to the growing pestilence of malicious intrusions into government and private data systems," Bennett said.

Posted by Matt Hines on September 7, 2007 01:30 PM

RATE THIS ARTICLE: