More of the Initiative...Proactive versus Reactive

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative was released by the White House late last week. The initiative is meant to be both proactive and reactive in nature.

Proactively, the government would like to have the most up-to-date anti-cyber terrorist actions in place to prevent a malicious group of users from accessing information or shutting down a grid of the internal infrastructure of the U.S. This basic goal is a large scheme project that is going to require a massive overhaul of several systems. Possible: yes! Probable: most likely. Expensive: you can bet on those $45 dollar hammers being part of that bill.

The Reactive aspect of the government is going to incorporate something known as counterintelligence (I know, government/military = counterintelligence, but that's not the point here). Counterintelligence in the cyber world is basically acknowledging a threat as soon as possible along with all of the affects of the threat and then finding a way to neutralize it. We would be "countering" an intelligent attack on the nation, hence counterintelligence. This is being spearheaded by a number of nerds, geeks, crackers, hackers and all around interesting people. As anyone that has worked in a specific area long enough with a keen sense of observation and a solid deductive skills can tell you, you start seeing trends. You see the results before they happen and you do what you can to react to those conditions.

Play any game, sport or puzzle long enough and you learn how the rules work and where they can be bent or broken. The same applies to a single computer, a network of computers or an entire infrastructure. The Internet follows the same rules and the malicious code that affects it tends to do the same. There is always an origination point. There are always a number of workstations that are used to deploy a code. The code tends to stay dormant in the recesses of a registry or folder on a workstation. The switch is activated and bam...a few million PC's start smoking, flashing red lights and spitting out bank account numbers. The Reactive people are meant to sniff this sequence of events out before the smoking, flashing and spitting happen.

My thoughts: might as well cover everything to prevent and stop all attacks. What are your thoughts?

Too Much...Too Late?

Forewarning: The following topic may become a hot topic on this blog over the next few months.

On Thursday, the White House released a brief overview of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative. Translation: this is  what we plan to do to prevent the recent cyber attacks against Google, Intel and multiple other major corporations.

The initiative is meant to be a protection plan for government agencies as well as the general population. Education may be the crucial point in the initiative. The amount of security that is and will be implemented behind the scenes will be near that "unfathomable" level, but the issue is that there is always a flaw.  What the flaw is has yet to be determined.

The initiative seems comprehensive because it does call on the population to start taking up an active role in their technological security. Antivirus, anti-malware and anti-spyware should be standard on your computer, regardless of if it's PC, Mac or Linux. Yes, even Mac and Linux users are and will become as frequently targeted as PC users. Market share has been increasing with each of these operating systems which has allowed crackers and hackers to start coding malicious code for all operating systems that are used.

All of that in mind, a self-awareness of what passwords are used across your online sites, where your accounts are in place and what information about you is on the Internet. I have been guilty of this until recently. The same set of passwords used across all sites and networks and that was it. I started testing out programs like KeePass and it's proven to be amazing. That comes highly recommended from me. Have a look and let me know if you have suggestions or questions.

As mentioned previously, I hope to be your source for the education mentioned in the initiative put out by the government. Not because the government says so, but because it's becoming a necessity for everyone quickly.

This was very brief opening to a complex topic so please let me know what you would like to hear about.

Have a great weekend!