Homeland Security Nominee Bashes CISA, Says it Should be Smaller, More Nimble

Conceptually, that is hard to argue with. But, as businesses of all sizes and government agencies at all levels are being hacked daily, is the ‘less is more’ philosophy correct. One thing she went after is CISA’s work on misinformation and disinformation.

This is a frequent complaint of some right wingers and to some extent, maybe she is right. If people are uneducated and lose their life’s savings to China, North Korea and Russia, is it really the government’s business to protect them? If businesses lose millions to ransomware attacks and even go out of business, again, maybe not the government’s job to fix.

She wants CISA to to work with local and state critical infrastructure to harden their systems.

Does she mean that businesses are adults and should pay to protect themselves?

She also says that CISA is incredibly siloed and needs to work with other law enforcement. I don’t know if that is true, but federal agencies have always been siloed – it is their way of retaining their own power and control and to be able to take credit when they succeed.

Senator Rand Paul wants to do away with CISA entirely. I don’t know if that is a widely held belief in the Senate, but that sounds pretty dangerous. It is clear that state and local governments are dramatically losing the battle against hackers and need help.

She also mentioned some vague efforts to “leverage private, public partnerships” and advance the use of unnamed novel technologies to protect our nation’s digital landscape. That is pretty vague.

Homeland Security includes FEMA, CISA, TSA, ICE, Coast Guard, CBP and the Secret Service. All of these have been the target of attacks from politicians, so there is plenty of material for target practice.

It will be interesting to see what happens if she is confirmed. Cyber crime is not going away. Way too much money to be made and for those in China and Russia, way too little risk. Credit: The Record

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