Obama's recent set of proposals aimed at combating cybercrime may not be as effective as the government hopes, according to David M. Upton, PhD, a professor at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School.
Here are the flaws Dr. Upton saw in President Obama's plan to tame the virtual frontier, presented by Harvard Business Review.
1. The initiative is more symbolic than practical. President Obama's initiative criminalizes cybercrimes. It prohibits the sale of botnets and stolen information and gives courts the power to shut down cybercrime networks. However, many of the perpetrators are "beyond the capacity of law enforcement to track them down in large numbers," Dr. Upton wrote.
2. The cybercrime problem is diminishing at home. However, it's picking up abroad — where American laws don't reach. International criminal competitors in Brazil, Russia and China pick up where the U.S.' criminal hosts leave off, and they offer their wares and services for less. Russia is the American cybercriminal's biggest threat. Russia's share of malicious hosts rose by 10 percent in three months in 2012, when the U.S.'s share dropped by 10 percent, according to Dr. Upton. He suggests implementing a global initiative to fight cybercrime.
3. Companies are already sharing information about cyberthreats. Part of President Obama's law was to promote cooperation between companies and the government by offering protection from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for companies that share information about threats. However, many industries have already created their own reporting centers, like the retail industry, which established the Retail Cyber Intelligence Sharing Center last year.
"I believe Obama's proposals are well-intentioned," Dr. Upton writes. "They at least start to address a set of problems that will impact the next generation even more than ours and may be the basis for some fundamental research. But I just doubt that they will be very effective in combating cybercrime."
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