Cybersecurity poll: Americans divided over government requirements on companies

In general, the poll found, people worry more about getting a computer virus and having their financial information stolen than they do about someone reading their e-mail or knowing what Web sites they have visited. But about a third of Americans are concerned about those issues as well.

“Americans want both privacy and better cybersecurity,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group. “It’s a huge challenge, but Congress has to deliver both.”

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About four in 10 Americans think it is unlikely that a major cyberattack will hit the government or industry in the next year, a finding that has not changed much over the past decade despite experts’ warnings that the threat of such an attack has grown.

Part of the reason Americans are not more concerned, experts say, is that the country has not experienced a major destructive attack.

“It doesn’t have the visual bang that a bomb or traditional kinetic attack would have,” said Frank Cilluffo, director of George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute.

Scaremongering is not effective, he said. “We don’t want to say, ‘The sky is falling,’ ” he said. “But we could have one heck of a rainy day.”

The capability exists, for instance, to knock out power or phone and Internet communications in a city, Cilluffo said. The United States and Israel teamed up on a covert cyber-operation to damage centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear facility, but the effects took place over months and no machines outside Iran were damaged.

The public also has mixed views on how prepared the government and businesses are to deal with a major cyberattack.

In general, only about a third of Americans believe the government is prepared to handle a cyber­attack, a view that has not changed appreciably since 2002, when a similar poll was conducted.

As for the private sector, 28 percent of Americans think businesses are prepared, while 31 percent think they are not prepared. Again, the numbers have not changed markedly in 10 years.

Americans across party lines see a range of potential aggressors in cyberspace. About 26 percent of those who express concern about a destructive attack see China as the greatest threat, while 19 percent single out al-Qaeda as the likeliest perpetrator. Iran and Russia also make the short list, based on an open-ended question.

The telephone poll was conducted May 17 to 20 among a random national sample of 1,004 adults. Results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Polling manager Peyton M. Craighill and polling analyst Scott Clement contributed to this report.

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