Prez Tells States You Are On Your Own for Cybersecurity – No Money to Help

Yesterday the president signed an EO planning a new National Resilience Strategy letting the states figure out how to protect themselves. This includes both cyber disasters and other physical disasters.

The order says that state and local governments AND INDIVIDUALS play a “more active and significant role” in national resilience and preparedness.

This comes after the co-president’s team slashed programs that aided the states in protecting their infrastructure.

This means that it will be up to the states and local governments to both figure out how to replace the support that they used to get from the feds and then, with no financial help from the president, figure out how to pay for it.

Fundamentally, what is happening is a risk and cost shift from the federal government to local governments.

For big cities like, say, Dallas or Chicago, they likely understand what they have to do, even though they don’t have the money to do it.

For small towns, and there are thousands of them, they are mostly clueless. They don’t even know where to start.

For businesses that are part of critical infrastructure like, say, big banks and big power companies (but less likely small banks and small power companies), the feds will still provide some support. It appears, and we won’t know for a couple of months the details, that they are basically telling states, cities, schools, etc. that you are on your own; go figure it out.

If this is the way it happens then there will be haves and have nots.

Many states do not have their own national security and cyber threat intelligence centers. Some states rely on the ISACs (federal intelligence sharing centers), but those just got shut down.

While some states will figure out how to do something, poor states will get left behind.

I don’t think this is an intentional effort to make it easier for China, Russia, North Korea and Iran to compromise us, but it will have that effect.

Stay tuned on this. We will know more in 3-6 months. In the meantime, if I was a governor or mayor, I would be planning for taking on more responsibility. Without any additional funding.

Credit: Data Breach Today

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