Obama Wants Big Hike In Cybersecurity Research 73
dcblogs writes "The White House 2012 budget seeks a 35% increase to $548 million in cybersecurity research and development, including funds to help DARPA mitigate the risk of insider threats. Think WikiLeaks. Improving control system security, post Stuxnet, was also cited as priority. Overall, the budget seeks $66.1 billion for basic and applied research across all areas, an 11.6% increase. Some areas called out for special focus by the White House include robotics. The feds have already started offering grants for developing of 'co-robots,' which are 'systems that can safely co-exist in close proximity to or in physical contact with humans in the pursuit of mundane, dangerous, precise or expensive tasks.' The US also wants to focus research on nanomanufacturing, 'and the merging of self-assembly with lithography to achieve large-scale predictable placement of nanoscale components.'"
Re:Or... (Score:4, Insightful)
There will always be people who are mad and/or insane enough to attack us.
The key is to realize that we could defend our country just fine on half of the budget.
At least *someone* is laying cards on the table... (Score:2, Insightful)
Partisianism aside, this is a good thing. Security initiatives are not going to be coming from the business sector because security has no ROI [1]. So, the only real origin of more robust tools to keep the blackhats out are going to have to come from governments.
Of course, my fear is that this security initiative (meant to keep data safe from being exposed, or worse, tampered with), may turn into funding for nastier DRM. Mainly because DRM does seem to have a ROI attached to it while security in general doesn't.
[1]: Of course, security saves money, but to a PHB, they don't really know or care that expanded security means that trade secrets keeping a competitive edge are safe. Couple this with the attitude of a lot of SMBs that "gee, if I get hacked, I can call Geek Squad 24/7 and they can fend off the hackers", and it is just shameful for a lot of the private sector. Not all, there are a few companies who actually keep their flies zipped up, but unless a regulation forces a company to keep data secure, it just won't be done.
Another Star-Wars boondoggle... (Score:5, Insightful)
Techno P. T. Barnums are plentiful, and always ready to collect your money. And in this case, there's a politician looking for an easy answer born every minuite.
Re:Easy. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be stupid. That's like securing banks by removing all the roads around it. Now it's secure and useless.
ANd it's a hell of a lot more then files you want kept out of the purview of others. It's stopping people from actually doing damage.
Typical, someone whop has no clue of what's involved thinks he can do it cheaper.
And you have no clue about the whats involved in buying a Veyron either.
Re:Or... (Score:4, Insightful)
Does anyone here actually think everything the US does that annoys people with computers is necessary? I mean, former ambassador John Bolton runs around yelling on Fox that we should bomb Iran pretty much every day. If Iran were -reasonable- they'd think about putting child porn on his computer. It certainly doesn't discourage them from funding cyberwarfare against the rest of us.
I think if our government were to take a reasonable response to Wikileaks rather than trying to burn Asange at the stake, Anonymous might be ever-so-slightly less inclined to do some damage to government networks.
There will always be people attacking the US as long as there is a US, sure, but we do encourage a lot of it, and we could ruffle fewer feathers definitely.