Obama outlines key security tasks

The new US administration has identified key areas for improvement in security.

Claiming that ‘the first responsibility of any president is to protect the American people', President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have identified international terrorism, bio-chemicals, nuclear weapons and information networks as the key areas for homeland security research and protection.

Working with private industry, the research community and US citizens, the government is aiming to ‘lead an effort to build a trustworthy and accountable cyber infrastructure that is resilient, protects America's competitive advantage, and advances our national and homeland security'.

Aims include the strengthening of federal leadership on cyber security, to declare the cyber infrastructure a strategic asset and establish the position of a national cyber advisor who will report directly to the President. The advisor will also be responsible for coordinating federal agency efforts and the development of national cyber policy.

A safe computing R&D effort will be initiated, and efforts will be made to harden the cyber infrastructure ‘to develop and deploy a new generation of secure hardware and software for our critical cyber infrastructure'.

Other aims include: the protection of IT infrastructure to establish tough new standards for cyber security and physical resilience; prevent corporate cyber espionage by working with industry to develop the systems necessary to protect trade secrets and US research and development; mandate standards for securing personal data; and require companies to disclose personal information data breaches.

Finally, the new administration plans to develop a cybercrime strategy to minimise the opportunities for criminal profit by shutting down the mechanisms used to transmit criminal profits by closing untraceable internet payment schemes.

Meanwhile, the new President has reportedly been unable to access Facebook or webmail as the White House security team has barred access to these tools.

See original article on scmagazineuk.com

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