A wide range of legislators and security experts serving on The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency recommended that a new office in the Executive Office of the President be created. This could mean that ultimate authority would reside Executive Office of the President, and government agencies would be responsible for their operational activitiesKey Recommendations from the Commission on CyberSecurity

• The new strategy should include diplomatic, intelligence, military, economic and law enforcement efforts.
• The NOC could easily be established by merging the existing National Center for Cybersecurity and the Joint Interagency Cyber Task Force.

The recommendation that I found most noteworthy concerned FISMA

• This group urged President-elect Barack Obama to work with Congress to rewrite the Federal Information Security Management Act to use performance-based measurements of security. He should also propose legislation that eliminates the legal distinction between the technical standards for national security systems and civilian agency systems. The group said FISMA encourages document reviews rather than network security improvements.

This commission has made great recommendations to President Elect Obama that can begin to address the critical failures of FISMA and other government information security efforts. If you are interested in reading the report, here is a copy:081208_securingcyberspace_44