US falling behind on catching up with Cyber security #BlackHat

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LAS VEGAS. Robert Lentz Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in both the Bush and Obama administrations and the first Senior Information Assurance Official for the Department of Defense serving since Nov 2000 took the Black Hat stage this AM talking about US cybersecurity.

In Lentz’s view the US needs a Cyber-Czar of cyber identity in order to raise awareness and get the US on track.
 “You have to think of cyberspace as a global commons, ” Lentz said. “Security the global commons is a shared responsibility. Should be our number one priority everything we do is about preserving the internet that is driving the information economy.”

Lentz also noted that While the US has made great strides in security Lentz said there is still much to do.

“The reality is we’ve fallen further behind on catching up,” Letnz said. “Security has been in a race and we are moving the entire Dod and it relies on the internet for everything we do. For us in the DoD the race is real and it’s daunting and we have a lot of significant challenges in front of us.”

Lentz also spoke about the need to understand how to keep trust zones small and manageable. In his view over the last 20 years directory services have been an issue.

“We need to have physical and logical worlds converge in the identity areas,” Lentz said.

Fundamentally the move that the US needs to take is to be more agile in responding and reacting to cyber risks.

“No defense is perfect. We have illusion we can prevent adversaries for coming into our network,” Lentz said. “We have to base decisions on reality and have to be able to fight through a cyber-degraded network.”

PIC: Robert Lentz Credit: Sean M. Kerner