Cybersecurity report offers Obama some far-reaching recommendations

While saying that regulations would fill the gap between what is currently being implemented and the requirements for national security, the report stated, “We also reject the oft-heard argument that 'voluntary regulation' provides the right solution.

With privacy and civil liberties in mind, the committee also called for strong authentication for access to infrastructure deemed critical. Strong security would be a "mandatory requirement for critical cyber infrastructures which include telecom, energy, finance, and government services."

At the same time, the committee recommends regulations that protect consumers by preventing companies from "requiring strong government-issued or commercially-issued credentials for all online activities."

However, if private enterprise is identified as part of our critical infrastructure this may become somewhat problematic.

The committee also calls on Congress to modernize the current statutes that deal with technology.

What may face the most sustained criticism in the report is its call for a new cybersecurity superstructure with new departments and new chiefs.

Among the new organizations recommended are the National Office for Cyberspace under the Executive Office of the President, the appointment of an Assistant for Cyberspace, and the establishment of an NSC (National Security Council) Cybersecurity Directorate as well as a Presidential Advisory Committee under the Federal Advisory Committee Act and a Center for Cybersecurity Operations.

In what can only be called an unfortunate analogy in the introduction to the report, the writers of the report hearken back to England's struggle during World War II to break the Germans' secret, encrypted code and decrypt German communications. Using that struggle between two warring countries as an analogy, the introduction to the report on Securing Cyberspace states, "The United States is in a similar situation today, but we are not playing the role of the British."

The commission was made up of both private sector and government security experts with the goal of creating a single, coherent strategy for cybersecurity that becomes an umbrella of standards to secure cyberspace whether those efforts are private or public.