Are We Engaged in a Cyberwar???

Differentiating Between Spying, Crime and Warfare...

America is under virtual attacks, with key government, military and private-sector information systems being assaulted from abroad. But none of that means we're experiencing a cyberwar.

That's the reckoning of James Lewis, senior fellow at the public-interest policy group Center for International and Strategic Studies. "Spying and crime are not acts of war," Lewis said at last week's panel discussion - Cyberwar: Is Congress Preparing for the Common Defense? - at the State of the Net Conference sponsored by the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus. "I don't think we have seen a case of state-versus-state cyberwarfare. "

What would cyberwarfare entail? Some experts suggest that cyberwar - like kinetic war - must cause significant damage and disruption to critical physical infrastructures and human casualties, including deaths.

"We have not seen this type of kinetic attack. That does not mean that it won't happen if we get into a conflict with an advanced opponent," Lewis said. "They have done the reconnaissance, they have done the planning, they have built the tools to let them disrupt things like critical infrastructure. This will be part of warfare in the future. But we're in the stages before cyberwarfare. We are in the stages of people poking around. They're trying to figure out what are the rules, what are the thresholds, what's the other guy up to."

Conventional war has rules, and Congress should address the legal structure of cyberwarfare. "It's not like we're writing on blank slate here," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at Center For Democracy and Technology, a not-for-profit group that advocates a free and open Internet. "There are rules of war that would have to follow if there was an (cyber) attack."

I.T.SecurityLatest@lerts!!

A Requirement of I.T. Security Career Planning!!

I.T.Security professionals may know where they want their careers to go, but they aren't doing much about it.

People seem to believe that their careers are going to take care of themselves.

That's the key finding from a recent information security career survey conducted by Web-based information security career consultancy, Information Security Leaders. The survey tallied responses from nearly 1,000 IT security professionals on questions from career planning to job satisfaction.

While over 65% of respondents claimed to be "more than confident" that they would reach their ultimate career goals, only one in six respondents had actually written an information security career plan.

"People spend more time planning their vacations than they spend planning where they want to be 10 years from now in their careers," said, one of Information Security Leaders' co-founders. "It blows my mind."

IT security career advice:

Stay or jump ship? How to be happy with your infosec job: Don't leave your job just yet.

Couple this with the fact that, of the 68.4% of respondents who reported that their career development was "very important" or "extremely important," more than half plan to spend less than $1,000 on that development in the following year, and it makes sense that job satisfaction among respondents was also surprisingly low.

"I was really surprised how many people were less than satisfied [with their current jobs], and why," said,co-founder of Information Security Leaders. "People seem to believe that their careers are going to take care of themselves…[many are] really confident that their resumes differentiate them from others. But I look at resumes all day long and that's pretty far from the truth."

Of the respondents, more than 50% reported that they are "less than satisfied" with their current job, while only 21% reported being "more than satisfied."

So what steps should infosec pros take to invest in their careers? "Any investment you make is a good one," said Kushner. "The investment for a person should be determined by what makes sense for them, and what makes sense is determined by going through a self-assessment process. … Look at job descriptions of the jobs you want, and map your skills to those." And if your skills don't match up, figure out what you need to do to get them there by evaluating your weaknesses. "You might think you understand business, but do you understand business on a level that would be good enough for the C-suite?" SearchSecurity radio:

But above all, "write a plan," & "You have to know where you're going in order to get there."

Of the infosec pros that reported having a written career plan, 38.4% responded that they held director-level or above positions, compared to 26% of those who had no written plan and held similar positions. Salaries were also better for those with written career plans: 35.7% of those who had such a plan make an annual salary of $120,000 or above, as opposed to only 24.4% of those who had no written career plan and made similar salaries.