September 10, 2010 9:43AM # And You Look to Government for Cybersecurity? By [Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) --- SHARE *Washington Times* reporter Shaun Waterman has a characteristically excellent article out today about [U.S. cybersecurity authorities failing to secure their own systems](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/9/audit-finds-lapses-in-federal-cybersecurity/). > According to a new report by government auditors, systems at the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), part of the Department of Homeland Security, were not maintained with updates and security patches in a timely fashion and as a result were riddled with vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit. Time and again, people look to government intervention based on [what they imagine](https://www.cato.org/a-real-regulator/) government might do under ideal conditions. Real conditions produce far weaker results. We’re better off distributing the problem of data, network, and computer security among all the self-interested actors in the country—fallible as they are. We should not abandon the problem to a central authority whose failure fails us all. ##### Related Tags [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).