“But the REALITY is that while theLION’s SHARE of cybersecurity expertise lies in the federal government, more than 90 percent of the physical infrastructure of the Web is owned by private industry. Neither side on its own can mount the cyber-defense we need; some collaboration is inevitable.” What LION is he talking about or did he mean to say: “Lieing Share?” Let’s look at some facts. DHS has 188K federal employees and over 200K private sector contractors. Thus, assuming many of them are working on cybersecurity, that cyber expertise in NOT in the federal government but in the private sector. Of course DHS had its HSIN system hacked last year. http://fcw.com/Articles/2009/05/13/Web-DHS-HSIN-intrusion-hack.aspx Because the FEDERAL Government does NOT have cyber expertise they are trying to HIRE it from the private sector. http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/02/dhs.cybersecurity.jobs/index.html CSIS reports:
“Currently, the U.S. Department of Defense has 90,000 personnel involved with cybsercurity, with only 35,000 to 45,000 non-civilian cybersecurity employees. Every year it trains 80 cybersecurity professionals and is calling for an additional 20,000 to 30,000 cybersecurity professionals. Only 120 cybersecurity experts go into government after graduation, but the government is looking to increase that number to a thousand. Other government programs look to attract10,000 young Americans into the expanding field of cybersecurity.” http://csis.org/blog/hire-cybersecurity-specialist DOD was not able to even prevent its program on the Joint Strike Fighter from getting hacked! http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/21/pentagon.hacked/index.html GAO has recently reported on many of the problems with the CNCI program too. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-10-338 And Mike, because the federal government DOES NOT HAVE the lions share of Cyber Sec expertise, they are AGAIN going to the private sector and trying to buy some of that expertise they desperately need! http://fcw.com/Articles/2010/02/26/Web-DHS-cybersecurity-RandD.aspx?p=1 That is the REALITY that I see.