Howard Schmidt was appointed this week as the new White House Cyber Security Chief.
Mr. Schmidt also was a supervisory special agent and director of the AFOSI Computer Forensics Lab and Computer Crime and Information Warfare Division. Considered an expert in computer forensics, Schmidt's roughly 40-year career includes 31 years in local and federal government work, including a stint as vice chairman of President George W. Bush's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. He also was for a short time an adviser to the FBI and worked at the National Drug Intelligence Center.
Any thoughts or opinions on Mr.Schmit? He seems to have a very organic involvement with cyber security and a passion for digital forensics. I hope he is able to get through the bureaucracy and can implement real changes based on his work in the field.
While I don't know Mr. Schmidt, I think Bruce Schneier has said it best. Since the position doesn't really come with any power or authority at the moment, I think that's going to be a bigger problem for him.
How many Cyber Security Cheif's have we gone through so far? 3 or 4 I think?
I certainly hope they change some things to give the position some authority to DO something. But since most of the security agencies STILL aren't sharing information, I'm not holding my breath on this one.
Tom
I actually do know Howard, I have no choice, we are related. )
It is going to be a thankless job. He will get the blame for every breach from here on out. From what I can tell from the news, he won't have the authority to put in place the needed changes going forward.
My condolences.
As you guys said - all the responsibility, none of the authority.
From what I can tell from the news, he won't have the authority to put in place the needed changes going forward.
I doubt that there is any position that has that authority. That is part of the problem. Another issue, in my experience, is that there is a great deal of outsourcing of cyber security talent which doesn't have to be bad but certain complicates issues for command and control, especially when the contracts are issued by different agencies.