More than 20 pending bills in the Senate and 13 in the House address cybersecurity, but a panel of cybersecurity policy experts says the current proposals all fail to consider the role of culture in cybersecurity.

"We need to realize we're dealing with a clash of cultures," said Amb. David Smith (Ret.), Potomac Institute senior fellow and director of the Georgian Security Analysis Center. He added that it's not that nation states, cyber terrorists, cyber criminals and social malefactors don't understand U.S. ethical norms for cyberspace--they just don't agree with them. Until this conflict is acknowledged, said Smith, it will be difficult to formulate actionable policies.

"This hands across the water approach isn't going to work...we're defending against something," he added, while speaking at an Oct. 5 Potomac Institute event in Arlington, Va.

"Yes, we can't do things alone. But don't imagine you can do it with anything other than allied countries," said Smith.

Culture is overlooked because the Internet is too often idealized as a "commons" or an "ecosystem," but in reality the cyber domain is much less serene, said Smith. "We've got to get away from this notion of cyberspace. There is no such place, folks," said Smith. "Everything you touch is in the territory of somebody."

Lt. Gen. Robert Shea, USMC (Ret.), executive vice president of Defense Department and unified services at Smartronix, agreed that culture plays a large role in cyberspace and should also be emphasized in cyber policy. How the Homeland Security Department, Federal Communications Commission, DoD and industry work together will require each entity to rethink its role.

"A lot of these problems can be addressed through culture shift, but I'm concerned we don't have the leadership to push that change," said Shea.

"One of my biggest concerns is that we have people making decisions who don't really understand the complexity of what's going on. So, we try to take the complexity out of the issue and we lose the totality of what we're facing."

For more:
- see archived video of the event

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