Ways to strengthen nation's cyber security recommended in new report

cyber.st.dhs.gov

A two-volume report with recommendations for improving the nation's security in cyberspace was released May 31 by the Center for New American Security (CNAS) located in Washington, D.C.

In volume one of the report titled America's Cyber Future: Security and Prosperity in the Information Age, CNAS Vice President and Director of Studies Dr. Kristin M. Lord and Bacevich Fellow Travis Sharp argue that America’s growing dependence on cyberspace has created new vulnerabilities that are being exploited as fast as or faster than the nation can respond.

Cyber attacks can cause economic damage, physical destruction, and even the loss of human life, they maintain. They constitute a serious challenge to U.S. national security and demand greater attention from American leaders.

“The challenge is to prepare for cyber threats with insight, diligence and rigor, while avoiding what the 9/11 Commission report termed failures of imagination,” they wrote. “The nation’s security and prosperity are at stake. There is no time to waste.”

The second volume of the report is a compilation of essays by more than a 20 cyber-security experts. They include Joseph S. Nye Jr. ("Power and National Security in Cyberspace"), Mike McConnell ("Cyber Insecurities: The 21st Century Threatscape"), Gary McGraw and Nathaniel Fick ("Separating Threat from the Hype: What Washington Needs to Know about Cyber Security"), Thomas G. Mahnken ("Cyberwar and Cyber Warfare"), Gregory J. Rattray and Jason Healey ("Non-State Actors and Cyber Conflict") and Martha Finnemore ("Cultivating International Cyber Norms").

Also penning chapters in the second volume of the report are David A. Gross, Nova J. Daly, M. Ethan Lucarelli and Roger H. Miksad ("Cyber Security Governance: Existing Structures, International Approaches and the Private Sector"), James A. Lewis ("Why Privacy and Cyber Security Clash"), Richard Fontaine and Will Rogers ("Internet Freedom and Its Discontents: Navigating the Tensions with Cyber Security"), Christopher M. Schroeder ("The Unprecedented Economic Risks of Network Insecurity"), Daniel E. Geer Jr. ("How Government Can Access Innovative Technology"), Robert E. Kahn ("The Role of Architecture in Internet Defense") and Peter Schwartz ("Scenarios for the Future of Cyber Security").

A panel discussion on the report and other cyber-security issues will be held at the fifth annual CNAS conference June 2 at the Willard InterContinental Hotel's Grand Ballroom in Washington, D.C. On the panel with Lord will be Ellen Nakashima, national security reporter for the Washington Post; Rand Beers, under secretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate in U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Robert Butler, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy in the U.S. Department of Defense; and Max Kelly, former chief security officer for Facebook.

i360gov.com