Historically, legislation has proven to be woefully inadequate in preparing the U.S. for cyberwar. Why? Because there are no consequences. Until there are repercussions or someone is going to lose their job for not being secure, this will continue to be problematic. This is where the government is missing the boat. Trying to legislate cyber security without holding organizations accountable seems to be the crux of the problem.

Unfortunately, our friend and newly appointed U.S. Cyber Security Czar, Howard Schmidt, is in a tough spot. With no budget or real authority to levy consequences, there’s not going to be much change. Although many believe the government can and should be leading the way to improve the nation’s cyber defenses, Mr. Schmidt believes the best defense remains in the hands of the private sector.

It all comes down to holding people accountable. Without repercussions, there’s no incentive for companies to spend money to get out of the status quo in terms of what security best practices are, and start thinking in a more proactive manner.

It’s only when people’s jobs are on the line that things truly get done. Only then will we start to move beyond our reactive mindset and get ahead of the problem by implementing proactive solutions such as application whitelisting that adequately prepare ourselves for cyberwar.

The webinar, sponsored by CoreTrace, will be held on October 27th at 2:00 p.m. EDT/11:00 a.m. PDT.

Click here to Register.

Abstract:

The shortcomings of blacklist-based antivirus solutions are well known and are no longer disputed (for one view of the situation, please read “Dimensional Research Antivirus/Anti-Malware Survey of IT Professionals”). As a result, innovative IT teams are looking into the promising new approach to stopping malware: application whitelisting.

But these teams are discovering that security is not the only benefit of application whitelisting. In fact, some are arguing that the solution’s operational and compliance benefits may even surpass the security ones.

As a former writer/editor at leading publications like InfoWorld and eWEEK, and current leading analyst at The 451 Group, Paul is the perfect expert to facilitate this discussion—and to do it a different way than a simple, one-way webinar. Please join Paul for an interactive “roundtable” discussion on the technology, promises, potential shortcomings, and ultimate benefits.

Event Information:

• Title: The 451 Group Webinar & Roundtable: “What Are The Real Benefits of Application Whitelisting: Security, Operations, Compliance?”

• Date: Tuesday, October 27, 2009

• Time: 2:00 p.m. EDT/11:00 a.m. PDT

Fear not. This will not be your standard corporate blog site — with nothing but thinly veiled announcements about product enhancements, new customer blurbs, and other self-promotions.

CoreTrace is different. While we are a security vendor – helping change the endpoint security landscape by pioneering client-based application whitelisting – we have opinions and thoughts on many related areas. Our team has hundreds of years of cybersecurity and enterprise software experience (scary as that sounds to us), so look for us to comment on everything from antivirus (blacklisting is seriously broken) to NERC CIPs (the goal of the CIP-003 & -007 should simply be to prevent the execution of unauthorized code).

So please come back often, subscribe to our RSS feed, comment liberally (though professionally, please), follow us on Twitter, join our LinkedIn groups, etc. We are very excited to have this new forum to openly discuss the future of cybersecurity with you all.