Obama administration tweaks its cybersecurity plans

When it comes to cybersecurity, the Obama administration is taking the same approach to the policies of the Bush administration as it has in so many other areas: there are differences, but they're mainly matters of subtle emphasis and focus.

Take the Trusted Internet Connection initiative, which the Bush administration launched in late 2007, and which is aimed at securing the government's network infrastructure by routing all of its network traffic through a smaller number of access points. The original goals of the TIC program were to establish a baseline set of security practices for government systems that access the Internet, to consolidate all federal Internet access points into about 50 officially certified TICs, and to put in place an audit process to ensure that all government agencies stay in compliance with the program. Of these three goals, it was the network consolidation piece—the entire federal government accessing the Internet through only 50 connections total—that grabbed headlines and caused the most push-back from federal agencies. It's this part that the Obama Administration has eased up on, but only a bit.