Political Quotes

“I rise in support of H.R. 1903, legislation I introduced with Chairman Sensenbrenner and ranking Members Gordon and Brown on June 17, 1997, and which was unanimously reported out of the Technology Subcommittee, which I chair, on July 29, 1997. The Computer Security Enhancement Act of 1997 updates the Computer Security Act of 1987 to take into account the evolution of computer networks and their use by both the Federal Government and the private sector. H.R. 1903 recognizes that the U.S. Government is not grappling with the issues of data security in a vacuum. The bill encourages the setting of standards which are commercially available, thus aiding our software and hardware industries as well as assuring that the government can secure its information technology infrastructure with the most effective and cost efficient products. This is significant both because of the vital role the information infrastructure plays in our lives and the role that technology has in our economy. Information technology security, or rather the lack of attention paid to it by the Federal Government, may well make the year 2000 computer problem seem small in comparison if we do not focus our attention on this vital area. In their May 1996 report, the General Accounting Office [GAO] stated that the Department of Defense systems may have experienced as many as 250,000 attacks during 1995, of that total, about 64 percent of attacks were successful at gaining access to the DOD system.”