Uncle Sam Wants Your InfoSec Insight

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This week, the White House expressed a new commitment to improving the nation's cyberdefense. President Obama laid down a new executive order, "Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity," and spoke about cyberdefense in his State of the Union address. (Click the link above or watch the video below, beginning at 00:43:03.)

One of the core principles of the executive order is to increase info security information sharing -- more sharing between the public and private sector and more sharing between various government agencies themselves.

The order also established a plan to, over the next 12 months, build an official "Cybersecurity Framework" for organizations that are considered part of the nation's critical infrastructure. "Critical infrastructure" in this case is defined as:

...systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.

This scheme for the government to create a cybersecurity framework has ruffled some IT professionals' feathers. Some of the main criticisms:

• The government should not demand any detailed security data that could violate privacy or damage business.
• The government lacks adequate infosecurity expertise.
• This "framework" sounds an awful lot like a "regulation," and organizations already have too many regulatory compliance responsibilities.
• A new framework will conflict with other industry standards and regulations.

These are all-important concerns, but all of them are addressed in the executive order. Most importantly, adoption of the Cybersecurity Framework and participation in the information sharing efforts will be voluntary.

In fact, the executive order indicates that the government will provide "incentives" to encourage the organizations that manage critical infrastructure to participate. There's no information yet on what those incentives might be, but the Secretaries of the Treasury and Commerce will be releasing more details about that over the summer.

According to the executive order, information submitted voluntarily will be "protected from disclosure to the fullest extent permitted by law."

Perhaps recognizing the fact that government agencies are indeed a bit behind the times when it comes to cybersecurity techniques, the executive order states an intention to "expand the use of programs that bring private sector subject-matter experts into Federal service on a temporary basis." You'll also be able to provide your professional two cents when a preliminary version of the framework is made available for public comment this autumn.

Surely the framework -- just like any other set of regulations, standards, or guidelines -- could simply be another way to complicate infosec and annoy CIOs and CIOs, but the government does seem aware and wary of that possibility. From the executive order:

The Cybersecurity Framework shall include a set of standards, methodologies, procedures, and processes that align policy, business, and technological approaches to address cyber risks. The Cybersecurity Framework shall incorporate voluntary consensus standards and industry best practices to the fullest extent possible...

The Cybersecurity Framework shall provide a prioritized, flexible, repeatable, performance-based, and cost-effective approach, including information security measures and controls, to help owners and operators of critical infrastructure identify, assess, and manage cyber risk...

To enable technical innovation and account for organizational differences, the Cybersecurity Framework will provide guidance that is technology neutral and that enables critical infrastructure sectors to benefit from a competitive market for products and services that meet the standards, methodologies, procedures, and processes developed to address cyber risks.

What do you think? Does the US government stand a chance of creating an effective, useful security framework? Will it fall into the same trap that so much technology-related legislation does -- being obsolete and out-of-date before the ink is dry? Will the defense of the nation's critical infrastructure actually improve?

The government is calling upon you, IT professionals -- will you answer the call?