Cyberspace in the 21st Century demands that organisations know where their information is, how secure it is and what measures are necessary, or sufficient, for effective data protection? The Senetas Leadership team comes together to share news and views related to information security and data protection in the face of new and emerging cyber threats. They comment on the latest trends and business strategies that minimise the risk to personal and corporate information.
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By Julian Fay
London - A former US Presiddential cyber security adviser today called for an international standard for data breach notification laws.
With many US and foreign jurisdictions now implementing quite different data breach notification regulations, Professor Howard Schmidt, now President of the Informatio0n Security Forum in London, said it was one area where federal governments must work together. After the 9/11 attacks he was appointed Vice-Chairman of the President’s Critical Infrastructure Board by President Bush to help create the US national strategy to secure cyberspace.
“Just because there’s a database sitting in the middle of the US doesn’t mean that data is not transiting Eastern Europe or South East Asia. As a consequence, having consistency worldwide is a bigger priority to worry about than trying to do it at a nation state level,” he said.
Prof Schmidt said that while governments should not generally try to legislate for technology solutions to cybercrime, he believed mandating encryption of data in transit would work.
“The value to these criminals is the data – it is the gold, the silver and the diamonds of the world we live in today, so if you take the value out of the data by encrypting it in transit and at rest, then it becomes useless to them.”
Speaking at an RSA session on Governments and Cybersecurity, he said a "cyber Pearl Harbour" was less lilkely than 10 years ago, but obviously still possible in places like Estonia and Georgia, "but we now have the ability to recover better than ever before".
Executive Director of the European Association for E-identity and Security (EEMA), Roger Dean, told the forum "network terrorists are organised, don't need a country to operate from...but at the moment they are focused on getting financial gain," adding that Estonia showed how a country could be brought to its knees , "and probably we will see some more of that."
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