Interesting Audience Data from the Symantec Government Symposium

Security is getting worse, more help needed from the private sector

Earlier this week, I participated in the Symantec Government Symposium, an event dedicated to IT and security professionals in the U.S. Federal government. As part of her kickoff presentation, Symantec Federal GM, Gigi Schaum, asked for audience responses to three questions. Here are the questions and the interesting responses:

1. Has the state of cybersecurity improved over the last 12 months?
55% of the audience responded "no"
45% responded "yes"

2. Which of the following represents the biggest cybersecurity threat?
40% responded "hostile foreign nations"
39% responded "lack of federal security standards"
21% responded "organized crime"

3. Who has the most impact on cybersecurity?
38% responded "industry"
26% responded "DHS/DOD"
21% responded "the white house"
15% responded "congress"

My take is as follows: Cybersecurity is worse than it was 12 years ago -- there are more threats and the threats have become more sophisticated. The nation has been effectively treading water in that time frame so the gap continues to grow. President Obama's focus on cybersecurity and his appointment of Howard Schmidt were positive moves but not enough.

I agree that hostile foreign nations represent the biggest potential threat but on a day-to-day basis, organized crime is picking our pockets. To some extent, this response concerns me because it casts security into a military category. It is also interesting that 39% said "lack of federal security standards." These people were either looking myopically at the Federal space alone, or believe that the Feds haven't stepped up with cybersecurity leadership. The former answer reflect insular Washington,the latter is absolutely true.

As for the final question, I couldn't agree more. If 80% of the critical infrastructure is in the private sector as the President suggests, than industry must be a major part of the solution. This "public/private" partnership has also been lagging.

In total, these answers tell me that things are getting worse and we aren't doing enough. Pretty scary stuff.

• cybersecurity. President Obama
• DHS
• DOD
• information security
• Symantec