There is an interesting piece in Federal Computer Week [https://fcw.com/articles/2016/07/11/obama-cyber-weakness.aspx?m=2] that purports to show how President Obama has learned about cyber security after the White House was hacked. That does bring it home when somebody steals something that you are personally affected by. He emphasized the importance of education, especially for people using handhelds like his Blackberry, and said everyone needs to pay more attention to the business of protecting their information systems. Better late than never.
We might have thought that the President would have taken an interest in this subject after the Post Office and IRS got hacked more than once. We might have thought it would be a little important after the State Department e-mail system was hacked by a foreign government (don't confuse this with Hillary Clinton's e-mail catastrophe which is not the same thing). But, if nowhere else, we would have thought it would have been important after the loss of millions of security clearance records from the Office of Personnel Management. The business leaders of Washington, politicians, and staffers all had clearance information that was lost. That would seem to prompt an action to improve the state of cyber security in the government, but it took a hack of the White House to bring it home. Then, he decides to address the issue while in Europe where it will get next to nothing in the way of press coverage and no interest at all in the Federal channels it was addressed to. It is not what you say that counts, Mr. President, it is what you do - or in this case, don't do. The Clinton e-mail fiasco was part of that learning experience. Since he sent email to and from the systems, he knew she had an email address that wasn't official. Hackers of the White House might know it too.
Yes, there are lessons to be learned here. We just have to figure out what they really were.
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