Reform the US Government’s Structure and Organization for Cyberspace
Name
Institution
Reform the US Government’s Structure and Organization for Cyberspace
Introduction
The CSC was started to be a component of the John S. McCain National defense authorization act of the year 2019. It was meant to develop consensus about the strategic methods of defending the cyberspace of the USA against any significant attack. The commission finalized its report, which outlined cybersecurity-related issues, technical concerns, policies across private as well as public sectors. This was released on 11 March 2020. Since not all the eighty recommendations within the report are pertinent to every industry, some are speaking the roles of federal agencies directly (Poh & Ong, 2019). Such has been given in coordination and overseeing efforts of securing essential infrastructure as well as manage risks in conjunction with DHS. The strategy cornerstone laid out within the report is layered cyber deterrence. This is combining the existing mechanism of deterrence in federal governments alongside extending those mechanisms towards covering critical infrastructures and private industries within an approach in the entire nation (Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC). To be specific, the CSC will attempt to increase costs as it decreases the advantages which adversaries expect whenever they are planning cyber-attacks against the interests of Americans. The recommendations within the report are arranged into six pillars (Haukilehto & Hautamäki, 2019). However, this paper discusses the pros and cons of “reform the US government’s structure and organization for cyberspace” pillar.
Pros
The reforms of cybersecurity are based on averting malicious attacks done against data networks of information technology. The IT cybersecurity has been a problem for nearly 20 years. As a result of money, in addition to the attention given to the cybersecurity specialists, it is still hard for the issues to get solved (Poh & Ong, 2019). Arguably, the control system of cybersecurity is behind with about 5-10 years having less management being done and associated funding given to IT department. The pillar will assist in bringing reforms to which, if appropriately used, lead to success.
Real impacts on control cybersecurity systems- there have been multiple incidences of IT security policies, technologies, procedures as well as other testing methods. These have impacted the operation of the control system, and in some instances, have damaged various control systems that are being used. However, the first pillar would help bring real impacts on the control system. In multiple cases, there are positions where security designs, procurement, operations, and maintenance are made through reforms. In such instances, the pillar helps in bringing appropriate measures that help avert the cyber-attacks.
Implementing the pillar makes it hard to organize cyber-attacks concerning IT networks. With controlled systems, most of the sophisticated attacks often make equipment to be malfunctioned. The designers, operators as well as maintainers of equipment of control systems are engineers but not computer professionals (Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC). With the pillar one of CSC being put into use, the training gap of networking and engineers shall be reduced. This is a culture that commences in the University as engineering and computer security is not related. The culture gaps shall be changed with effective governmental models put in place to reduce the issues of cybersecurity.
Cons
As long as there are measures that have been put in place to assist in making the reform to be a success, there are demerits which the pillar will pose to the nation. For instance, the cost is a demerit. Implementation of the reforms on cybersecurity calls for additional charges. The government must give additional funds to the DHS to make the implementations of the changes to be effective. There is a need for sufficient funding of IT specialists to research the effects of reforming government structures about the organizational cyberspace. At times, the government might lack enough funding to execute such plans to make the reform applicable (Easter et al., 2019). Again, it required IT professionals to attain attaining the needed changes in the pillar.
Conclusion
Implementing the pillars proposed by CSC calls for the need to change the governance mandate in engineering management as well as technical staff participation in cybersecurity (Alsmadi, 2019). For instance, networking staff should work round the clock to make the proposed strategies a success. The meetings on security policies should be done frequently to make cyber experts have appropriate approaches that they can use in offering practical solutions to the cyber-threats. Again, it is imperative to provide training on cybersecurity on control systems. The engineers should assist in identifying malfunctioning equipment that could be related to the cyber. The cyber incidents on the cyber system should be treated as an issue of business continuity with personnel who are appropriately trained and available for any manual operations.
References
Alsmadi, I. (2019). Cyber Intelligence Analysis. The NICE Cyber Security Framework (pp. 91-134). Springer, Cham.
Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC) (n.d). Report. Retrieved from: https://www.solarium.gov/
Easter, T., Eaton, A., Ewing, H., Green, T., Griffin, C., Lewis, C., … & Weinman, K. (2019). Comprehensive US Cyber Framework: Key Aspects of Critical Infrastructure, Private Sector, and Personally Identifiable Information.
Haukilehto, T., & Hautamäki, J. (2019). Survey of Cyber Security Awareness in Health, Social Services, and Regional Government in South Ostrobothnia, Finland. In the Internet of Things, Smart Spaces, and Next Generation Networks and Systems (pp. 455-466). Springer, Cham.
Poh, A., & Ong, W. (2019). PLA Reform, a New Normative Contest, and the Challenge for ASEAN. Asia Policy, 26(4), 107-128.