States Lagging in Capabilities to Deal with Cyberattacks, Says FEMA
States like Virginia said they are going beyond traditional methods to ensure cybersecurity, as a federal report found that despite progress at the federal level, “cyber capabilities are lagging at the state level.” The latest National Preparedness Report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (http://xrl.us/bm6jmy) found that cybersecurity was the “single core capability where states had made the least amount of overall progress,” with an “average capability level of 42 percent.”
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There are gaps in cyber-related preparedness among 162 state and local entities, the report said. Though 80 percent of them said they had adopted “cybersecurity control frameworks and/or methodologies,” 45 percent said they hadn’t implemented a formal risk management program, the report said, quoting a Department of Homeland Security Nationwide Cybersecurity Review. More than 65 percent of state and local entity respondents to the review hadn’t updated information security or disaster recovery plans in at least two years, the report said.
Two-thirds of states identified cybersecurity along with housing and economic recovery as “high-priority” categories but their capabilities were the lowest in preparedness levels, the report said. States also grouped cyberattacks with earthquakes and hurricanes as events that would “significantly stress their capabilities,” it said. There has been a 650 percent increase in cyberincidents reported by federal agencies between fiscal 2006-2010, it said.
Virginia has adopted a “multi-faceted approach” to enhance cybersecurity “consisting of traditional auditing and monitoring methods, the utilization of commercial products, information sharing, and ... extensive employee education,” said Cameron Kilberg, assistant secretary at the Office of Virginia’s Secretary of Technology. But the state also has “opted to go beyond such traditional methods” and recently launched the Virginia Fusion Center, a partnership between the state police and the state Department of Emergency Management, she told us.
By encouraging cross-agency and inter-governmental communication, the center serves as a “vital conduit for information exchange between state and federal law enforcement agencies,” she said. “One of the goals of this Center will be to ensure resources are in place and ready to deploy during an official state of emergency -- this will ensure that our critical infrastructure and state services are restored as quickly as possible.”