Shockingly Unshocking: 'Cybersecurity' FUD Has Been Big Big Business For Contractors

from the well,-look-at-that dept

Back when this hype about "cybersecurity" and "cyberwar" first started to hit the mainstream (early on, "cyberwar" was more common, but lately people focus on "cybersecurity"), we had an article which suggested that much of this really seemed to be about scaring up a panic for the sake of throwing money at defense contractors who wanted to charge crazy huge sums for "helping" with cybersecurity. And, as we noted, that push was leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts. It appears that, with cybersecurity FUD only getting bigger and bigger, the folks who are making out like bandits are all those defense contractors who are jumping in to fan the flames of FUD... and then taking our taxpayer money to "fix" the problem.

In that link above, they talk about Lockheed and Raytheon signing agreements with Homeland Security in which they get to "help" the government out by scanning email and other info collected by the NSA.

Under the program, critical infrastructure companies will pay the providers, which will use the classified information to block attacks before they reach the customers. The classified information involves suspect Web addresses, strings of characters, email sender names and the like.

None of this necessarily means that online attacks aren't a real threat... but I'd feel a lot more comfortable about where things were heading if there weren't a whole bunch of defense contractors gleefully rubbing their hands together as they scoop up more and more contracts while the FUD keeps spreading.