Cyber Threat!: How to Manage the Growing Risk of Cyber Attacks

Chapter 5U.S. Cyber Public PolicyDon't Rely on It to Protect the Brand

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

—The U.S. Constitution

In a world compromised by the certainty and intensity of the current cyber threat, it is reasonable to require the government to provide for the common cyber defense. Little did the founding fathers conceive of a society and an economy driven not by agriculture and local trade but by invisible electrons traversing the planet and carrying a diverse array of information that fuels the engines of international commerce. How could they have known that enemies of the people and of the state could somehow in the years ahead easily, equally invisibly, and more quickly than the blink of an eye snatch that valuable information out of thin air and turn it to their advantage as if they were the alchemists of some future era?

In fighting against the cyber threat, whether in the form of terrorism, crime, economic espionage, or another scenario, the government of the United States and other governments around the world have an obligation to protect and defend. But that is a complicated mission. No one country is going to defeat the cyber threat. Public policy, though, demands ...