By Michael Fitzgerald
SecurityFocus
March 11 2003

It's existed for less than two weeks, but analysts are already concerned that the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity unit may not grow up to be the powerhouse of efficiency and expertise it was billed as.

Nearly every government cybersecurity agency was swept in to the new cabinet-level Department's "Directorate of Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection" -- making the new directorate the single largest computer security organization the U.S. government has ever had.

The Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office (CIAO), formerly part of the Department of Commerce, made the move, as did the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center. The Federal Computer Incident Response Center left the General Services Administration to head to the DHS. Even the Department of Defense's National Communications System, which handles emergency preparedness for telecom, moved to the new department.

The DHS also houses the Secret Service, which is expanding its cybercrime efforts, adding at least one "Electronic Crime Special Agent" to every field office. The service recently upped the number of cities with an Electronic Crime Task Force from one (New York) to nine, and has developed a National Threat Assessment Center with Carnegie-Mellon's CERT/CC.

But despite the number of agencies involved, cybersecurity generally seems to have slipped in importance for the Bush Administration. One obvious sign is the dramatic decrease in the visibility of the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. The strategy was trumpeted by the White House and taken seriously by industry until its anticlimactic release as a draft version, followed by an almost unheralded final release on Valentine's Day as a generally toothless plan.

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