Podcasts Government Government Information Security Podcast Feds Seen Regulating IT Industry

Feds Seen Regulating IT Industry

Published: Aug. 11, 2009, 7:13 p.m.

b'Gartner: IT Regs Will Be Enacted in 5 Years\\n\\n

Like the airlines, automotive, financial services, pharmaceutical and telecommunications industries, the government will soon - probably within the next half decade - begin to regulation the IT industry, IT adviser Gartner predicts. \\n\\n

"There\'s a trajectory that industries tend to follow; when an industry is extremely successful - that is to say that when an industry succeeds in moving its products and services right into the heart of daily life, regulation tends to follow. in the 20th century," Richard Hunter, a Gartner fellow and vice president, says in an interview with GovInfoSecurity.com. \\n\\n

"We saw the Food and Drug Administration, we saw regulation of telecom, we saw regulation of the airlines industry, we saw regulation of the automobile industry," he says. "I think the information technology industry has been extraordinarily successful in the last 40 to 50 years in increasing the importance of its products and services to almost every aspect of modern life. And, what usually happens in any industry when you reach that level of importance in society is that regulation takes place."\\n\\n

In the interview, Hunter discusses how:\\n\\n

Mounting pressure to regulate the IT industry has gained favor as the number of breaches have exponentially rocketed over the past decade.
\\n\\n
Innovation could be stifled, especially for startups and the open source community that don\'t have the financial wherewithal of a Microsoft or Oracle to conduct the testing regulation likely would require.
\\n\\n
IT vendors will produce off-the-shelf tiered products, including those for information security, that would assure a certain level of quality, for a price.
\\n\\n

Eric Chabrow, GovInfoSecurity.com managing editor, interviewed Hunter.'