Submission + - DHS is Struggling to Fulfill its Cyber Mission (securityledger.com)
And, this week, outgoing Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) used his final days in office to issue a blistering report on the Department of Homeland Security. Coburn argued that DHS was failing on each of its five, critical missions, among them: cyber security. (https://securityledger.com/2015/01/senator-warns-of-dhs-struggle-with-cyber-security/)
The report, “A Review of the Department of Homeland Security’s Missions and Performance,” (http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=23ce3547-adf7-4798-b9d8-56ea2a486e95) was released on Saturday. In it, the outgoing Senator said that DHS’s strategy and programs “are unlikely to protect us from the adversaries that pose the greatest cybersecurity threat.”
Despite spending $700 million annually on a range of cybersecurity programs, Coburn said it is hard to know whether the Department’s efforts to assist the private sector in identifying, mitigating or remediating cyber incidents provide “significant value” or are worth the expense. DHS programs are still heavily weighted towards software vulnerability mitigation, Coburn says, an activity that “will not protect the nation from the most sophisticated attacks and cybersecurity threats.”