Industry Leader: OMB Should Take Lead in Deconflicting Regs Under National Cyber Strategy

Posted on March 13, 2023 at 12:06 pm

By Charlie Mitchell / March 13, 2023 Federal agencies should be required to clarify that proposed cybersecurity rules are not “duplicative or in conflict with existing regulations,” according to a key industry player on cyber, an idea embraced by former White House cyber coordinator Michael Daniel as a way to deliver on regulatory streamlining under President […]


WHY CYBER REGULATIONS IN NATIONAL STRATEGY MAY NOT WORK

Posted on March 6, 2023 at 10:21 am

The new National Cybersecurity Strategy released last week calls for intensified federal regulation on IT providers, while presumably shifting regulatory focus away from technology users (we will see what the regulatory agencies and the SEC has to say about that last part). The strategy asserts “regulation can level the playing field enabling healthy competition without […]


THREE QUICK STEPS TO IMPLEMENT THE NATIONAL CYBER STRATEGY (NOT WHAT YOU THINK)

Posted on March 3, 2023 at 10:00 am

There are probably various government agencies where regulators have already sharpened their virtual pencils preparing to write up some new regulations go along with the new National cybersecurity strategy released yesterday. Please put down your pens.  That is not where implementation of the new strategy needs to begin.  While much of the conversation about the […]


IS REGULATION THE ANSWER TO OUR CYBERSECURITY PROBLEM (PART I)

Posted on March 1, 2023 at 9:23 am

There is a is a common misconception that cybersecurity regulation has not been tried, and that, if only there was federal regulation of cyberspace, we would have a more secure environment. The facts don’t bear out this assertion.  In our next two posts, we will first lay out the empirical evidence that cyber regulation does […]


IS THE CYBERSECURITY PROBLEM ONE ABOUT TECH OR ECONOMICS?

Posted on February 27, 2023 at 10:14 am

Spoiler alert: It’s both.  However, virtually all of our efforts to address our cybersecurity problems have focused on the tech side and virtually none on the underlying economics of cybersecurity.  This has led to an unbalanced and ineffective government response in “providing for the common defense” in the cyber infrastructure. In their classic work, The […]


US CYBERSECURITY – OLD PRACTICES, NEW VISIONS

Posted on February 24, 2023 at 7:52 am

US cybersecurity policies have been inadequate for decades and need to be updated to counter the heightened digital and physical risks the nation faces from our adversaries today. The US cybersecurity effort over the past thirty years largely comes down to a series of modest, disjointed, incremental tactics. On the other hand, one significant rival, […]


From Pulitzer Prize winning author Byron Acohido on Last Watchdog.

Posted on February 23, 2023 at 8:57 am

The review (pasted below) is also available at AUTHOR Q&A: China’s spy balloons reflect a cyber warfare strategy America must counter https://www.lastwatchdog.com/ By Byron V. Acohido The attack surface of company networks is as expansive and porous as ever. Related: Preparing for ‘quantum’ hacks That being so, a new book, Fixing American Cybersecurity, could be a long […]


THE (ONLY) PATH FOR THE US TO WIN THE DIGITAL WAR WITH CHINA

Posted on February 22, 2023 at 8:00 am

In a series of posts over the past couple weeks (LINKS), we have documented how China has been successfully carrying out a concerted and multi-faceted digital program designed to re-make the post-WWII world order and redirect it toward China. The Chinese campaign is well conceived, integrated, generously supported, and largely covert, which is consistent with […]


CAN THE US MATCH CHINA’S MILITARY-CIVIL FUSION MODEL? WILL IT?

Posted on February 20, 2023 at 9:50 am

In recent posts, we have described how over the last 30 years China has smartly leveraged the vulnerabilities of the digital age to steal Western technology and, in so doing, leap-frog generations of R&D to become a world economic power. Not satisfied with their renaissance as an economic power, China leveraged massive government financial support […]


Huawei is Just the Tip of the Spear in Digital Aggression

Posted on February 13, 2023 at 7:53 am

In our last post we documented how Huawei technology, thanks to massive cross-subsidization from the Chinese government, was succeeding in deploying its telecommunications network around the world.  That is a story that is fairly well known in Washington policy circles.  However, Huawei is by no means the only technology threat China poses though its comprehensive […]