Cyber-Katrina?
More than five years ago, President Clinton was already speaking of the promise and pitfalls of connectedness:
The very openness of our borders and technology, however, also makes us vulnerable in new ways. The same technology that gave us GPS and the marvelous possibilities of the Internet also apparently empowered a student sitting in the Philippines to launch a computer virus that in just a few hours spread through more than 10 million computers and caused billions of dollars in damage.
The central reality of our time is that the advent of globalization and the revolution in information technology have magnified both the creative and the destructive potential of every individual, tribe and nation on our planet.
“Today, critical systems like power structures, nuclear plants, air traffic control, computer networks, they’re all connected and run by computers,” Clinton added. He clearly recognized that cybersecurity meant much more than viruses and identity theft, as troublesome as those problems are.
Yet in the 5 years since, government is doing so little to protect us. As Paul Kurtz of CSIA was saying recently to Declan McCullagh of CNET News:
When you look at the events of Katrina, you kind of have to ask yourself the question, ‘Are we ready? Are we ready for a large-scale cyber disruption or attack? I believe the answer is clearly no.
McCullagh goes on to write:
If an Internet meltdown happened–perhaps a modern-day rendition of the 1988 worm created by Robert Morris–Homeland Security’s cybersecurity official would wield little power yet shoulder all the blame, Rubin [Johns Hopkins computer science professor Avi Rubin] said. “The person who was cybersecurity czar would be out of a job and would be blamed even though it might have been someone else not following a policy.”
Some government officials are waking up to the need to address the issue. Last weekend I met Attorney General Hardy Myers, who, alongside U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut, recently announced the Oregon Safe Cyberspace Initiative. While that’s a good start, the critical systems of which President Clinton spoke are more of a federal responsibility than a state one.
And Katrina dramatically illustrates what happens when the federal goverment is not up to the job.
