This is a Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, July 2nd, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown.

Securing internet infrastructure is a big job and one that requires careful consideration.

Though the relative insecurity of some networks represents a market failure,

it does not demand government regulation.

So says Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.

Last week I had the opportunity to testify in the House Science Committee on Cybersecurity.

I've been struggling with

Cybersecurity for a while but the opportunity to present to the

committee forced me to sit down and spend some time on this issue and it was very

helpful because I think some definitional issues have to be taken care of before there's a

sensible conversation about cyber security. One is that cyber security is

essentially a meaningless term. The cyber world if you will

is the entirety of networks computers and data. Well if you talk about

cyberspace that's the equivalent of real space.

How do you secure real space?

Well, we don't secure real space.

We secure specific things in real space.

And so cyberspace is really thousands of different problems in terms of network management,

in terms of securing data, in terms of business processes.

To secure cyberspace will literally mean that over decades or perhaps hundreds of years

people figure out what the social processes are, what the technologies are, what the economic models are that cause this

realm, this new cyberspace to be a secure stable environment.

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