In a recent report to President Bush, an advisory task force presented a damning picture of the nation's information technology infrastructure.
The authors of the study, "Cyber Security: A Crisis of Prioritization," warn that the current system is "highly vulnerable to attack" and urge a fundamental rethinking of how the nation's computing architectures and technologies should get deployed.
Don't get your hopes up. If past is prologue, I think it's safe to assume that nothing will come of this--until it's too late and people again are scrambling for answers.
It's tempting to become cynical about so sensitive a subject, but the blunt truth is that Americans care more about the ultimate outcome of "American Idol" than they do about repairing the nation's IT infrastructure. Outside of the confines of the security nerds who live and breathe this stuff, most folks are bored silly by the subject.
Unless the president awakes one day to an epiphany, the report will surely get summarily rerouted to a dusty shelf in a forgotten corridor of a nondescript department, somewhere deep in the bowels of official Washington, D.C. Just like so many other do-gooder position papers that wind up ignored and put aside.
But when the stuff one day hits the fan--as it inevitably will--nobody in authority will be in a position to claim they didn't know.
http://news.com.com/A+cyber+con+game/2010-1071_3-5635833.html?part=rss&tag=5635833&subj=news
Boy oh boy do we miss Richard Clarke...