A sudden spike in the number of successful attacks against federal government data systems and databases has led President Bush to propose a multi-billion-dollar response.

The number of incidents reported to the office of Homeland protection rose by 152 percent last year, to nearly 13,000, according to a new government report. The safety measure breaches, more than 4,000 of which remain under exploration, ranged from the work of random hackers to organized crime and foreign governments, says Tim Bennett, president of the Cyber shield Industry Alliance.

The increase and severity of documents breaches prompted Bush to recommend a 10 percent increase in cybersecurity funding for the coming fiscal year, to $7.3 billion. That’s a 73-percent increase since 2004.

“The president’s put a lot of emphasis on that recently,” says Robert Jamison, undersecretary for national protection and programs at the area of Homeland safety measure. “We’re concerned that the threats are real and growing. … We’re more vulnerable as a nation.”

Members of Congress and experts in the private sector say the government’s new initiative is overdue.

“There are more and more poor guys out there,” says Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., who chaired a Senate Homeland defense subcommittee hearing that week on government info protection risks. In 31 percent of the infiltrations, he says, “agencies do not know who took the knowledge or how much data was taken.”

Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., who chairs the House Homeland shield subcommittee with jurisdiction by the issue, says the Bush administration “has not paid nearly adequate attention to cybersecurity” until that year. Now, he says, “they’re at least trying to move in the right direction.”

Homeland safety measure Secretary Michael Chertoff has made improving cybersecurity one of his top four goals for 2008. “It’s the one area in which I feel we’ve been behind where I would like to be,” he told reporters here…

Orginal post by Top Tech News