Clarke's Visit to MIT: Software Security and Vendor Guidance

After releasing a draft of the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace for comment in September, Clarke has embarked on a cross-country tour, soliciting feedback on the document and stumping for passage of the bill that would create the Department of Homeland . . . After releasing a draft of the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace for comment in September, Clarke has embarked on a cross-country tour, soliciting feedback on the document and stumping for passage of the bill that would create the Department of Homeland Security. During his most recent stop, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, audience members gave Clarke a wide range of suggestions for the strategy, with many of them centering on the theme of vendor responsibility for insecure software.

Many people asked Clarke, chairman of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Baord, to consider recommending some form of regulation for the software industry as a way to spur vendors into writing more secure applications. Clarke resisted the idea, as he has in the past, saying that he'd rather rely on market forces and customer demand to weed out the careless vendors.

One area where Clarke agreed that new legislation might be in order is security research. One audience member complained that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and anti-hacking laws are preventing legitimate security researchers from publishing information on new vulnerabilities.

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