Understanding Vulnerabilities Key To Improving US Cybersecurity Posture

Improving the current U.S. cybersecurity posture requires a comprehensive understanding of why information security weaknesses exist and persist, as well as the factors that constrain US efforts to improve cybersecurity, according to a recent report.

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS), an independent and nonpartisan research institution, recently released the report, “Surviving on a Diet of Poisoned Fruit: Reducing the National Security Risks of America’s Cyber Dependencies,” to examine the information security weaknesses facing US policymakers and provide recommendations to overcome those insecurities.

“We are staking our future on a resource we have not yet learned to protect,” said former CIA Director George Tenet, as quoted in the report.

According to the author of the report, Richard J. Danzig, a CNAS board member as well as a member of the Defense Policy Board and The President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, stated that, “the beginning of wisdom about cyber systems is to understand that vulnerability is inherent in the technology.”  The same technologies that make cyber systems attractive -- the ability to store and manipulate large quantities of data, communicative capabilities, complexity of hardware and software and responsiveness to instruction -- also make them risky in what Danzig described as a “Faustian bargain.”

Read the full article at Homeland Security Today.