Our Cyber Protectors Have Failed Us – A Call To Action

This broadcast is a Call To Action. I ask that an alliance of government, academia, and the private sector spend sixty days developing an actionable plan to address these root causes of this cyber pandemic and form a team to bring method to the madness that now exists, unfortunately, in the software industry. These actions will not bring short-term relief to this cyber pandemic, although they will provide a greater understanding of actions that need to be taken while a longer-term solution is developed.

In this edition of Real Talk with Sam Holcman, we urge all to look beyond trying to determine the culprit(s) behind the most recent cyber breaches that have affected agencies, utility providers, and private sector entities. There is a “root cause,” I believe, that exists that will continue to plague all of these “targets” and will not be solved only by looking at the culprits behind these attacks.

The root causes are:
(1) No baseline in the technology communities to manage changes to technology (commonly referred to as Enterprise Architecture) and

(2) The “maturity level 1” software development practices exist in most public and private sector entities that develop computer solutions and software.

In this Call To Action, we stand ready to assist, provide more detailed briefings, and participate as a team member moving forward. The time to act is now!

In my radio broadcast on June 26th, 2019, titled Get Over It, The Hackers Have Won, I discussed these topics and proposed a call to action to stimulate actions necessary to begin the journey to a more secure cyber environment. While it received attention, dominant parties in the software community could see a total revamp of their existing practices and would naturally resist these actions.

The most recent cyber-attack on an Oldsmar Florida water supply, the recruitment on LinkedIn by alleged Iranian operatives for cyber-attack training, and the multitude of incidents well outside of the highly publicized Solar Winds breach should put us on notice that this cyber battle is just beginning. The trend, to me, is clear. Incidents will increase. We can and should begin to examine the root causes of these incidents and chart a path to address these fundamental issues.

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