President Barack Obama showed his clear support for the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 in an op-ed piece published a week ago in The Wall Street Journal. In the article titled "Taking the Cyberattack Threat Seriously,” the President considers a worst case scenario related to an attack on critical infrastructure and stresses that “the United States of America have the opportunity - and the responsibility - to take action now and stay a step ahead of their adversaries". Mr. Obama closed his piece by urging the Senate to pass the Cybersecurity Act of 2012.

The United States are constantly targeted with cyber attacks, but the situation for the current administration became even more complicated after New York Times' David E. Sanger, while announcing his new book "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power," confirmed that the USA and Israel are behind the Stuxnet worm. Stuxnet, as you probably know, was used for sabotaging the Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz – a move that supposedly regressed the country’s nuclear weapon production program up to three or four years.


In the information security and military circles, the phrase cyber war and its integral components are still undefined, but this acknowledgement of the USA standing behind the Stuxnet worm could be understood as an "official" start of a cyber war between these countries.

Parts of critical infrastructure are legitimate targets in non-kinetic warfare, so a fresh and updated set of security rules and methods could be a good thing for organizing their protection. Even if the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 is not the optimal solution, it is at least a positive step forward.