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Fatal flaw of White House cybersecurity plan

Alan Paller is the Vice President for Research at the Sans Institute.

Federal News Network Staff

August 17, 2011 5:12 pm

< a min read

wfedstaff | June 4, 2015 10:06 am

The White House’s plan to build up the cybersecurity workforce is out. But one expert says the White House has made one fatal flaw.

“The good part of the plan is it stated the problem really well: The nation has a desperate need for a workforce capable of responding to the new threat. And we don’t have it,” said Alan Paller, vice president for research at the Sans Institute.

But he added, “The flaw is (the plan has) got too long a time horizon. It’s looking at things that might work in a decade instead of what will use in the next few years.”

Another flaw is the strategy ignores people who have and are “experimenting with cybersecurity tools,” Paller said.

One agency – the National Security Agency – has tapped into this potential workforce. NSA recruiters recently attending a high-profile hacker conference.

Governmentwide, though, the shortage of a cyber workforce is “terrible,” Paller said.

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