The recent disclosure of a confidential Congressional document has at least one congressman calling for a ban on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software, but a closer look at the problem reveals that this effort would merely be treating the symptoms, not the disease. First some background. Last month the Washington Post revealed that more than thirty members of Congress and staffers were under investigation for possible ethics violations, including for "accepting contributions or other items...

While most Americans were watching fireworks on July 4, hackers launched what would turn in to a multi-day denial-of-service attack against U.S. websites. The Associated Press reported that the cyber attack knocked out the websites of several government agencies including the U.S. Treasury, Secret Service, Transportation Department and the Federal Trade Commission. In addition, the attackers targeted the websites of the White House and the Pentagon but neither was severely disrupted. The attack...

On Friday, May 29, the Obama administration announced the results of the 60-day review on cybersecurity conducted by Melissa Hathaway and laid out new priorities for cybersecurity. Overall, the report delivers a solid overview of the current challenges and presents next steps for grappling with them. Key portions of this strategy include creating a "Cyber Czar" to oversee national cybersecurity initiatives; public-private partnerships to better share data and resources; efforts to create and...