Plan to address wireless security

The Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Board has almost completed a new version of the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, which will be a companion to the National Strategy for Homeland Security released July 15. The new cybersecurity plan incorporates input from leaders of industry and academia and will be released Sept. 18.

The plan will address wireless security and the potential instability of the Internet as more and more Web-enabled wireless devices connect to it, said Richard Clarke, President Bush's cyberspace security adviser and chairman of the CIP Board.

A key recommendation will be for the federal government to facilitate the research and development necessary to fix the problem, including providing funding and other resources to researchers and groups such as the Internet Engineering Task Force, Clarke said.

But industry leaders also must accept responsibility for securing their products and helping users deploy and configure the devices. "The industry needs to work faster to come up with agreed standards and standards that can be easily understood and widely applied," he said.