White House Tackling the Economics of Cybersecurity

GovTechGuy writes "White House Cybersecurity czar Howard Schmidt will be hosting a meeting Wednesday with the Secretaries of DHS and Commerce in which he is expected to discuss the administration's new attempt to change the economic incentives surrounding cybersecurity. Right now, launching attacks on private companies is so cheap and relatively risk-free that there's almost no way that industry can win. The White House could be considering things like tax incentives, liability and insurance breaks, and other steps to try and get companies to invest in protecting their networks. It's also likely to dovetail with a step up in enforcement, so hackers be wary."

Comments

Insurance?

[Monkeedude1212]

I mean, an insurance company won't insure your house if you don't put a lock on the door, so why should anyone care for cyber-security if a company doesn't take any measures to protect itself?

If you've got a network worthy of necessary security, it's not that hard to set up a linux firewall between your router and your gateway.

fix the banks

[Lord Ender]

The major targets of hackers these days are financial in nature: account numbers or systems authorized to perform wire transfers.

The real solution to security is not to give companies more incentive to secure their information, but to give hackers less incentive to hack. Make a standard, PKI-based, government-regulated solution for financial transactions. Require that all transactions be digitally signed by smart cards, for example. Ensure that someone possessing your account numbers or even your passwords could not use them to transfer money from your account.

It sounds like they are going after the wrong incentives right now...