Five federal cybersecurity priorities

Summer may be the time to relax for most people, but not if you are in Washington working on a string of cybersecurity issues.

Eric Chabrow, managing editor of GovInfoSecurity.com, outlines a full agenda this summer on the IT beat in government. These priorities include:

> Naming a cybersecurity czar, an appointment that is going slowly upstream.

> Reforming seven-year-old Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). It's long overdue and is slowly making its way to the surface on Capitol Hill.

> Securing Cloud Computing. How to make cloud computing secure is one of the biggest issues for making it viable for the federal government.

> Enhancing cybersecurity R&D. In this age of spending billions to achieve many different goals, the budget for cybersecurity R&D is just $300 million, hardly enough to build a 21^st century system on.

> Updating the Privacy Act. It's failed to keep pace with IT, and it's made it harder for the government to employ some technologies because of privacy concerns. Can it be fixed?

It takes money or legislation for each of these initiatives. And whether the government has the vision to tackle all of these issues is a big question to be played out in the coming months.

For more on the top IT initiatives:
- check out this GovInfoSecurity.com article