A Standard In Cyber-Defense -- A Commentary

Image from Kal Sketchblog

A Gold Standard In Cyber-Defense -- Joe Lieberman, Susan Collins and Tom Carper, Washington Post

The history of Internet security is both worrisome and instructive. When the first virus — the “Morris worm” — was launched in 1988, the Internet was a closed system of 60,000 computers used almost exclusively by academic, government and military researchers. Morris used known vulnerabilities in communications software to knock offline about 10 percent of the computers tied to the Web. The cry immediately went out for greater security, but complacency soon set back in.

Today, the Internet has more than 2 billion users — one in every three people on the planet. It is a nearly indispensable tool of modern life. But consider just a few high-profile victims of successful computer intrusions in recent months: Sony, Citigroup, the International Monetary Fund, the Gmail accounts of high-ranking U.S. officials and the computer security company RSA — an intrusion that seems to have played a part in later attacks on Lockheed Martin and perhaps other defense contractors that use RSA products.

Read more ....

My Comment: The U.S. Senate is positioning themselves to write legislation that will police the internet. I wish them luck.