Federal plans for Internet simulation and assessment

Tue Dec 4 19:27:20 UTC 2001

Declan McCullogh has a number of interesting references in his
current Politech note.  Excerpts are shown below.  The concern for
improved security and resilience is commendable, the immediate focus
on vendors cramming down patches on users is, erm, debatable.

http://www.politechbot.com/p-02875.html

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As part of its efforts to beef up homeland security, the federal government
will set up a national center for infrastructure simulation and analysis in
January, said Richard Clarke, chairman of President Bush (news - web
sites)'s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board.

``The center will create, if you will, an acupuncture map of the country,
so that if there is a fire in a railroad tunnel in Baltimore, we know the
Internet slows down in Chicago,'' Clarke told a gathering of high-tech
executives at the Business Software Alliance's first Global Tech Summit
..

Clarke also appealed to the private sector, which controls the vast
majority of the Internet's infrastructure, to beef up its security
practices as well.

``We need to decide that IT security functionality will be built into what
we do. It's not an afterthought anymore,'' he said.

Software products should be shipped with security settings at their highest
level, he said, and high-speed Internet providers should require individual
users to install ''firewalls'' to protect against damaging viruses.

Software companies should not just make ``patches'' available to fix
vulnerabilities in their products, but automatically update users' software
for them, he said.

``It's not beyond the wit of this industry to figure out a way of forcing
down these patches,'' he said.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011204/wr/tech_security_dc_1.html