White House Blogs Cybersecurity

The Obama administration has posted three blogs to WhiteHouse.gov on cybersecurity since the sixth annual National Cybersecurity Awareness Month officially kicked off Oct. 1.

The first post, by John Brennan, read more like a marketing letter, emphasizing that "government, industry and the individual computer user must all play a role in securing our information networks and data."

In his second post, Brennan focused on the threats themselves, throwing out references to spam, worms, botnets and trojans -- not often done by administrations, but still nothing that most people haven't heard before.

Perhaps most interesting was the third blog, which included a video message from President Obama. More interesting than his message, however, was the link to onguardonline.gov, a joint effort of 12 federal agencies and 18 nongovernment organizations to provide practical tips to help computer users protect their personal information and avoid becoming victims of Internet fraud.

The site has been around for some time, Iaunching, I believe, in 2007, then incorporating additional Web 2.0 features in September 2008 but to little fanfare. Most references to the site on the Internet are from education and parenting Web sites and forums.

Missed opportunity?