Cybersecurity Czar Job Is Useless, Says Spafford

Trailrunner7 writes "It's been about seven months since Obama announced his plan to hire a cybersecurity coordinator, and the job is still vacant. Several prominent security experts have turned the position down, and in an interview on Threatpost, Purdue professor Gene Spafford says that the position is pointless. 'It won't have any statutory authority. It won't have any budgetary authority. That does not give it much authority of any kind. So when I hear that there are supposedly people who have been interviewed for this cyber coordinator job and didn't take it, I'm not surprised. It's not a winning position. I'm not at all surprised by the fact that it's empty. That position is a blame-taking position,' Spafford said."

Comments

Bruce Schneier agrees

[surmak]

See his blog post

Re:Spoken like a true CEO

[rudy_wayne]

It's a job where the President consults you for your opinion and takes action based on your advice

Wrong. In 2008 Candidate Obama said he would create a postion reporting directly to him. This year, President Obama created a position of "Cybersecurity Coordinator" which is a low level position reporting to OMB (Office of Management and Budget) and NEC (National Economic Council). In other words, the person in this new position will spend their time writing reports which will then go to the bureaucrats in OMB and NEC who will stamp the reports as "too expensive in these tough economic times".

Little or no information will ever reach the president. And even if it does, so what. It will be up to congress to allocate resources. Good luck with that.