The AP is reporting that the White House will be unveiling a broad cybersecurity proposal today.  Among the elements of the plan are expected directives aimed at better addressing system protection, enhanced monitoring of federal agency networks, and recourse after in the event that consumer information has been compromised.

The proposed plan has been met by concurrent efforts by congressional committees to produce legislation throughout the last two years.  A number of these efforts have been in the news, such as the internet “kill switch” and online ID’s.   In a post earlier this year, I reported on the limited progress in efforts to address security in this country.  It will be interesting if the forthcoming proposal will effectively address the body of points contained in the CSIS cybersecurity report amongst other readily available industry reports on these matters.  Certainly any breaking adoption will be progressive, but potential security mandates over federal agency networks may be a significant mark point that drives better and more secure methodologies and technologies throughout all industries.   Make no mistake, cybersecurity is one of the significant front-line battles this nation faces today.

Notably, the article addresses the concerns of civil liberties and privacy.  As discussed here at Silicon Angle, compromises have grabbed the attention of Washington in the news recently.  From the AP report, the following high-level description indicates the attention paid to the protection of the American people:

“The White House plan lays out broad goals to protect critical infrastructure, the federal government and the American people from data breaches. It calls for standards for industries to meet as they work to protect their computer systems.”

Any significant elements from the proposal will be scrutinized in the days to come.  It is believed to be very similar to prior Senate legislation.  The nation’s infrastructure is faced with an amalgam of potential security issues including identity theft, disclosure of personal, corporate, and national data, hacking rings,foreign threats, and more.  How these threats are addressed will be of interest to many parties, but clues indicating similarity to the Senate proposal suggest that there may be political aspects to any forthcoming adoption.

Details about the White House bill have been kept under wraps, but officials say large portions are similar to the Senate cybersecurity legislation, which is being drafted by the Commerce and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees, and coordinated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

It cannot be stressed enough that significant threats are emerging daily, and any number of them from any number of locations could be launched any day from any number of vectors.  All one would have to do is look at the Stuxnet paradigm.  This chain of events started with an infiltrative coordinated attack on an enemy country and their nuclear capabilities.  This could easily be extended and redirected to potentially “soft” targets such as Wall St, our nation’s power infrastructure, federal and financial targets, just to name a few.  With any luck the proposal will address a foundation for enhanced security and strike that balance of personal privacy that will best serve the country’s cyber-infrastructure and protect the citizens of this country at the same time.