Capitol Hill cyber security – not

Opinion

Jun 11, 20081 min

The Associated Press is reporting that a couple of members of the House of Representatives are claiming that their computers have been hacked by the Chinese government. Computers, mind you, that were used to store records on political dissidents presumably including Chinese dissidents.

If these claims are accurate (I would not accuse a politician of lying I am just saying that how can you trust someone who allows critical computers to be insecure to be knowledgeable enough to determine the particulars of the attack?), there could very well be arrests, prison and death in store for some of those dissidents. Pretty severe consequences for mishandling of data.

Message to Congress: just because China is far away from your chestnut paneled offices does not mean that you are safe from their prying eyes. Plugging your computer into a network is like creating a direct connection to the Red Army. So don’t leave critical information lying around. And another thing: accusing the Chinese of inappropriate behavior when you are so guilty of ignorant behavior is disingenuous at best.

Data Center

by Richard Stiennon

Contributor

Richard Stiennon is chief research analyst at IT-Harvest, the firm he founded in 2005 to cover the 1,600 vendors that make up the IT security industry. He is the author of Surviving Cyberwar (Government Institutes, 2010) and There Will Be Cyberwar: How the Move to Network-Centric Warfighting Set the Stage for Cyberwar. He is a member of the advisory board at the Information Governance Initiative and principal of TrueBit Cyber Partners. He also serves on the R2-TAC, the technical advisory committee for the Responsible Recycling standard for e-waste.

Stiennon was chief marketing officer for Fortinet Inc. and vice president of threat research at Webroot Software. Prior to that, he was vice president of research at Gartner Inc. He has a B.S. in aerospace engineering and an M.A. in war in the modern world from King’s College, London.

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of Richard Stiennon and do not necessarily represent those of IDG Communications Inc. or its parent, subsidiary or affiliated companies.