Friday’s Food for Thought: What’s Missing from the FCC Broadband Access Plan

Big news from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this week. They announced an ambitious plan to expand access to broadband. The plan touches just about everybody in the country by bringing broadband to the classroom, hospital, courthouse, home and small business office.

Of particular interest to those of us concerned about security is the public safety portion of the plan, which calls for steps to improve cyber security and the national infrastructure. The plan states, “Additional safeguards may be necessary to protect our nation’s commercial communications infrastructure from cyber attack and ensure it is resilient and reliable. Such safeguards could promote confidence in the safety and reliability of broadband communications and spur adoption. Accordingly, the FCC should create a cybersecurity roadmap, extend data collection efforts to broadband service providers and establish voluntary incentives to improve cybersecurity.”

Broadband service providers stand to win big from the plan and It begs the question, what are they doing, or should be doing, to promote the safety of individual users? Clearly we need all the help we can get.

Last week, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported 336,655 fraud complaints in 2008, a 22.3 percent increase from 2008. It’s discouraging that consumers are still being duped into advance payment schemes and phishing scams despite public education efforts, like our sponsorship of the Javelin Strategy & Research Identity Fraud Survey Report. The report showed we aren’t doing a good job educating millennials about safe data practices, a group that will certainly benefit from the FCC plan.

It makes sense to increase public education efforts as we increase access to the Internet. The information is already out there, put forth by coalitions like the National Cyber Security Alliance. And, we encourage broadband service providers and others who stand from the FCC to ramp up there public education efforts.

Thank you, FCC, and keep the consumer in mind when you develop your “roadmap.” After all, what good is a superhighway if there are no road signs to ensure a safe journey?