The Obama Administration issued an executive order on Friday, October, 7, 2011, to replace safeguards that exposed thousands of classified government documents in the wake of the WikiLeaks scandal last year. Specific details on the safeguards were not posted, but the Administration stated that procedures were implemented to monitor and detect specific behavior on sensitive computer systems. The New York Times quoted computer analysts as stating “these safeguards, as well as others in the executive order aimed at bringing greater consistency and accountability to information sharing and protection policies, are long overdue, and lag behind what is routine in the private sector.” The safeguards were remedial measures that should have been instituted long before the WikiLeaks debacle, but like most private organizations, the government is in a reactive mode when it comes to protecting mission-critical information. This is partly due to the notion that only a few organizations, government or otherwise, know what sort of governance procedures should be implemented, beyond technical ones, in order to secure its most sensitive data.
