Today the House passed H.R. 4061, the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2009 with a vote of 422-5. According to The Caucus:
[The bill] requires the Obama administration to conduct an agency-by-agency assessment of cybersecurity workforce skills and establishes a scholarship program for undergraduate and graduate students who agree to work as cybersecurity specialists for the government after graduation. . . .
‘Investing in cybersecurity is the Manhattan Project of our generation,’ Representative Michael Arcuri, Democrat of New York, a sponsor of the bill said on the House floor Wednesday. ‘But this time around we are facing far greater threat. Nearly every high school hacker has the potential to hamper our unfettered access to the Internet. Just imagine what a rogue state could do.’
Mr. Arcuri said that the federal government will need to hire between 500 and 1,000 more ‘cyber warriors’ each year to keep up with potential enemies. Troops online ‘are every bit as important to our security as a soldier in our field,’ he said.
Other than the fact that Rep. Arcuri puts far too much faith in American high school students’ hacking abilities, it does seem that the U.S. government is waking up to the issue of cyber security. The recent Google attacks and the hacking of 49 House members/committees’ websites must have given them a little push.
The next challenge will be generating interest in cyber security amongst a generation that can’t even secure the zippers on their pants, let alone network infrastructures. Will the government train a generation of cyber warrior script kiddies or will money be allocated to the right places so that creative minds can be cultivated to understand the issues involved? Only time will tell….
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