Commerce Department: Recent Wave Of Cyberattacks Sounds An Urgent Wake-up Call

The Commerce Department is understandably freaked out about cybersecurity.

After name-checking recent breaches at Citibank, RSA/Lockheed Martin, and Sony (“One of the archetypal brands of the last 50 years was felled”), hacks of Nasdaq and the IMF, and the pitiful defacing of the PBS website, the Commerce Department’s general counsel decried the state of security on the Internet during a keynote address at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in DC. “You probably heard today that the Senate was attacked, as well,” added Commerce counsel Cameron Kerry. “What I would say to you today is that we’re closer to a darker scenario [for the future of e-commerce].” “As we move to a cloud computing world, the principle barrier for the development of new services there is a lack of confidence in security,” said Kerry, saying that the market for online transactions will never reach its predicted $24 trillion if gatekeepers for information can't figure out how to keep it secure. He compared commerce in the cloud to the initial growth of the use of credit cards, and the introduction of encryption to sooth people’s security concerns. He laid out two priorities for the Commerce Department: cybersecurity and privacy. “The response can't wait for legislation or regulation,” said Kerry. “It must begin yesterday.”