Information Security Issues and the 2008 Presidential Election

This 2008 presidential election brought many first time events to the national scene. There was the 5.5 billion dollars spent by both parties trying to get to the White House, the total number of voters that came out vote, the unforgettable long lines many voters had to wait on in order to cast their ballots. Some voters waited as long as three to four hours before they were able to vote. Of course, one of the biggest first time events was the voting in of America’s first African-American President… “Barack Obama”.

There is another first time event that has not received as much national press as the previously stated item and it deals with information security issues. The information security issues involved in this election has raised a lot of concern and should be one of the top agendas of president elect Obama. He needs to make sure appropriate processes; procedures and laws are implemented to help protect our nation’s computing infrastructure. America’s previous two presidents, Clinton and Bush (W), acknowledge there were problems in the way our nation protected the critical infrastructure and implemented controls such as The National Plan for Information Systems Protection and Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). However, with our new economy and our reliance in information technology, we have to do a better job to protect it.

This 2008 Presidential election saw its fair share of information security issues. First, there was the Sarah Palin Yahoo! Email breach were a student names got access to here account via answering the security questions correct.

Than shortly after President Elect Obama won the election, hackers were sending out SPAM emails with malicious attachments asking the recipients to view his acceptance speech. Moreover, just recently, the FBI has confirmed foreign entities hacked into the computers of both Obama and McCain last summer in an attempt steal information about their foreign policies for future negotiations.

It seems like America is losing the cyber security against major powered nations as well as smaller and not as well funded nations.