Publication date:
20 August 2016Length of book:
320 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442255210
The spectacular cyber attack on Sony Pictures and costly hacks of Target, Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, and databases containing sensitive data on millions of U.S. federal workers have shocked the nation. Despite a new urgency for the president, Congress, law enforcement, and corporate America to address the growing threat, the hacks keep coming—each one more pernicious than the last—from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, the Middle East, and points unknown. The continuing attacks raise a deeply disturbing question: Is the issue simply beyond the reach of our government, political leaders, business leaders, and technology visionaries to resolve? In Hacked, veteran cybersecurity journalist Charlie Mitchell reveals the innovative, occasionally brilliant, and too-often hapless government and industry responses to growing cybersecurity threats. He examines the internal power struggles in the federal government, the paralysis on Capitol Hill, and the industry's desperate effort to stay ahead of both the bad guys and the government.
Every one of 16 critical infrastructures in the U.S. economy is susceptible to cyberattacks: agriculture, transportation, the power grid, even the pacemakers already implanted in patient's chests. And still, according to Washington, D.C., cybersecurity journalist Charlie Mitchell, 'The effort to secure cyberspace, by government and industry, remains in the embryonic stages.' The military, technology experts, business and government agree that the threats are clear, new attacks are discovered all the time and the tools for building defenses are at hand--why hasn't the federal government done more? In Hacked, his first book, Mitchell explains the conflicting interests and political struggles in the messy business of creating and implementing effective cybersecurity policy.
Most of the structures that need to be protected in the U.S. are privately owned. This sets up a tension between national security interests and concerns for personal freedoms, business operations and privacy. In 2008, as the Obama administration began to address the question of cybersecurity, many officials began to realize that 'it was a mistake to view cybersecurity as a technical issue. It was about people, process and commitment.'
Mitchell dives deep into the negotiations, innovations and failed initiatives of both government and industry. His descriptions of the most tortured legislative battles are straightforward and comprehensible. This is an accessible insiders' guide to a difficult subject that will interest anyone concerned about national cybersecurity.
Most of the structures that need to be protected in the U.S. are privately owned. This sets up a tension between national security interests and concerns for personal freedoms, business operations and privacy. In 2008, as the Obama administration began to address the question of cybersecurity, many officials began to realize that 'it was a mistake to view cybersecurity as a technical issue. It was about people, process and commitment.'
Mitchell dives deep into the negotiations, innovations and failed initiatives of both government and industry. His descriptions of the most tortured legislative battles are straightforward and comprehensible. This is an accessible insiders' guide to a difficult subject that will interest anyone concerned about national cybersecurity.