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Government Cloud, Government Security

White House to update cybersecurity legislation

By Xinghui Guo | 23 May 2011

The White House has proposed a cybersecurity legislative that “prevents states from requiring companies to build their data centres in that state, except where expressly authorised by federal law”.

While seeking to improve cybersecurity for American citizens, national critical infrastructure and the federal government’s own networks and computers, the proposal is also putting its weight behind cloud computing, saying that “this new industry should not be crippled by protectionist measures”.

Data sovereignty has long been an issue for governments with many concerned about hosting citizen’s data on foreign soil. But Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, said that some people have “overly dramatised the challenges”.

“It’s not going to be a question of technology. (Data sovereignty) is going to be a question of international law, and treaties that we will need to engage in the coming years.”

Apart from the federal government embrace of cloud computing, evidenced by the General Services Administration recent US$2.5 billion cloud computing procurement, the proposal also suggested drawing up frameworks to protect the privacy of individuals and civil liberties, updating the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), recruiting cybersecurity professionals, deploying intrusion detection systems, and greater government-industry collaboration.

The paper also lauded cloud computing’s expected benefits for the government: costs reduction, increased security, and the ability to help the government take advantage of the latest private-sector innovations.

Adding an Asia Pacific slant to cloud and privacy, Michael Sentonas, Chief Technology Officer of McAfee, said: “Policy directing data privacy laws is critical to cyber-security. Some of the more developing countries in fact lead the world in that regard. China is very advanced in that aspect, and Singapore’s privacy laws are also rather sophisticated. Comparatively, Australia needs to catch up and update its laws in this rapidly-evolving landscape.”

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