Obama plans to spend $14B to beef up U.S. cybersecurity

The funding would go toward detection programs, and increased ability to respond to attacks

Cybersecurity is looking more and more like the biggest issue of our time. With the Sony hacks that nearly caused an international incident last year, to the nude photo leaks to incidents that have show that even the U.S. government is vulnerable to potential attacks, its time to really start taking this issue seriously.

And that is exactly what President Obama is about to do.

The President's budget proposal for the 2016 fiscal year marks a total of $14 billion to be spent on cybersecurity, according to a report from Reuters. he efforts outlined in the proposal will allow the U.S. government to better protect federal and private networks from hacking threats.

That includes deploying more intrusion detection and prevention capabilities, instilling a greater sharing of data with the private sector and other countries, and to provide more funding in order to give the government's greater ability to respond to attacks.

The funding would also go toward the support of "several specific programs," including monitoring and diagnostics of federal computer networks, the EINSTEIN intrusion detection and prevention system and government-wide testing and incident-response training.

"Cyber threats targeting the private sector, critical infrastructure and the federal government demonstrate that no sector, network or system is immune to infiltration by those seeking to steal commercial or government secrets and property or perpetrate malicious and disruptive activity," the White House is quoted as saying in the summary.

There are at least three incidents that occurred over the last year that highlight the need for greatest government security.

First, the U.S. Department of Justice leveled charges against China for cyber espionage, marking the first time the U.S. ever leveled criminal charges against a foreign government for economic cyber spying. Then, in September, the United States Senate revealed that Chinese hackers, who are associated with the Chinese government, were able to breach computer systems of U.S. airlines, technology companies and other firms involved in the movement of U.S. troops and military equipment.

Most recently, hackers who claimed to be either affiliated with, or at least sympathetic to the Islamic State, or ISIS, hacked Google and YouTube accounts belonging to the U.S. Central Command.

There were reports that the hackers were able to get their hands on classified documents as a result of the attack. Some of the Tweets put out by the group included phone numbers for top military commanders, as well as what the hackers said were military scenarios for potential conflicts with North Korea and China. The government, of course, downplayed that possibility.

These incidents, and you know that there were many more like them, have occurred that we don't know about yet, should be more than enough to convince everyone that cybersecurity it really, really important.

Let's just hope that our hopelessly divided, and increasingly useless, government bodies can actually do something about it.

(Image source: nocamels.com)