As the U.S. government nears opening day for the Homeland Security Department, IT buyers and users may wonder how the landscape of computer and network security will be changed by the government's actions--as well as by continuing development of attackers' methods and security vendors' innovations. The previously separate worlds of public safety and foreign intelligence are converging on the evening news. The result appears in high-profile law enforcement actions, such as the investigation of Ptech Inc., of Quincy, Mass., late last year. It also appears in the invasive (and for IT vendors, potentially lucrative) information processing demands of laws such as the tortuously named USA PATRIOT Act, whose moniker abbreviates "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism."
Private-sector IT managers are justifiably concerned about the impact of these intrusive new rules, especially when combined with the Beltway's business-as-usual faction fighting--which threatens to impede the March 1 startup of the Department of Homeland Security due to struggles over whose people get which top jobs.
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