White House Posting Cyber Strategy Description, Preparing New FISMA Compliance Yardsticks, Says Schmidt
SAN FRANCISCO -- Unclassified descriptions of “all 12 initiatives” under the Comprehensive National Cybsecurity Initiative were to be posted online Tuesday, said Howard Schmidt, the White House cybersecurity coordinator. The action is part of the president’s commitment to “unprecedented openness in government,” he said in a brief keynote at the RSA Conference. It went live at www.whitehouse.gov/cybersecurity.
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Schmidt indicated there were practical reasons for the action. “Transparency and partnership are concepts that go hand in hand,” he said. The government can’t expect the cooperation that it needs with business, academics and “the public at large” if it hasn’t made known what it’s doing, Schmidt said. Openness is especially important when questions have been raised about the role of intelligence agencies, he said.
The Office of Management and Budget next month will put out new “performance metrics” for agencies under the Federal Information Security Management Act, Schmidt said. These will be aimed at encouraging constant efforts to improve security rather than ticking off boxes, he said. It has been said that follow-through on the Act has encouraged routine compliance more than security, Schmidt said. Another challenge for the administration is analyzing more than 40 legal issues raised by the cybersecurity strategy, he said.
The U.S. won’t beat its cyberspace opponents because they're weak, Schmidt said in conclusion. “We'll win because we'll become stronger.” He spent much of his talk assuring listeners that the federal government had been busy, productive and cooperative on all fronts while the coordinator’s job sat open for several months: “We're really paying attention” and making sure that the president and his other advisers always keep security in mind. Schmidt stressed the need for everyone to work together and said he’s particularly mindful of the need to collaborate with the federal chief technology officer and chief information officer, because “security is not something you bolt on later” to technology systems. He called his work on the National Economic Council “vitally important” and acknowledged a need for the government “not to do things that would hamper innovation."
“You are the ones making the difference,” Schmidt said to the computer professionals and businesspeople in his audience, “not someone making dire predictions that things are falling apart.”