Review urges WH leadership on cybersecurity

A cybersecurity review commissioned by President Obama is urging the White House to take the lead in protecting government computers from spies, criminals and other hackers — a move that would displace the Department of Homeland Security as the lead agency.

“No single agency has a broad enough perspective to match the sweep of the challenges,” said Melissa Hathaway, a consultant and former intelligence official who worked on computer security in the Bush administration and led the review under Mr. Obama.

The issue, Ms. Hathaway told a recent meeting of private intelligence contractors, “transcends the jurisdictional purview of individual departments and agencies.”

She later told The Washington Times that the report’s release had been delayed because of the flu epidemic but that it would be issued in the coming days, with its recommendations posted on the Internet.

The White House declined to comment, and details are being closely held ahead of publication.

Moreover, Mr. Obama would have to sign off for the recommended organizational changes to take effect.

Although Ms. Hathaway declined to discuss details of the report with The Times, she has told private security experts who were consulted in preparing the review that the review aims to address “strategic vulnerabilities” in cyberspace.

Currently, Title II of the Homeland Security Act, the 2003 White House National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7 published later that year make the Department of Homeland Security “the focal point for the federal government to manage cybersecurity.”

More recently, the question of how to organize U.S. government computer defenses has surfaced with reports of cyberraids by hackers in places such as China and Russia.

The issue raises many novel legal and policy issues. For example, when attackers strike anonymously across the Internet - and the line between vandalism, crime, espionage and war can be unclear - how can policymakers best respond?

“America’s cyberspace is constantly under attack,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said at a recent hearing.

“The best that I can determine, our defenses to those attacks are inadequate,” said Mr. Lieberman, whose committee is considering its own cybersecurity legislation.

Ms. Hathaway echoed those sentiments in remarks last week to the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a trade group representing government contractors in the national security field.

“The federal government is not organized appropriately to address this growing problem,” she said.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, and other members in both houses of Congress are also pushing their own bills. As a result, the legislative process looks to be complicated by the pull of turf and oversight responsibilities at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

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