Obama's Cyber Plan Needs More Oomph - Interview with Eugene Spafford of Purdue University

Summary: Eugene Spafford, one of the nation's top information security experts who heads Purdue University's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, likes the fact that cybersecurity is getting the attention he feels it long deserved from the White House and Congress. <p>Still Spaf - as he's affectionately known - expresses concern that President Obama isn't going far enough to elevate cybersecurity as a national priority, in part, because the White House cybersecurity advisor is not seen having the clout to create policy. And, he wonders if the president and Congress have the political wherewithal to invest enough money to truly secure federal IT. </p><p>In an interview with the Information Security Media Group's Eric Chabrow, Spafford explains that: </p><p></p><div id="blist">A high-ranking cybersecurity czar is needed to be a peer of cabinet secretaries and major agency heads to influence them to help advance federal IT security policy;</div> <div id="blist">Proposals to require the certification of information security professionals is problematic because of a dearth of cybersecurity practitioners and trainers; and </div> <div id="blist">Legislation to grant the president authority to shutter the Internet in a national emergency is ill-advised, because the circumstances for such a situation could be ambiguous.</div>