After years of trying, Sen. Joe Lieberman appears resigned to the fact he will likely retire at the end of this year without successfully shepherding cybersecurity legislation through the Senate. Roll Call's Niels Lesniewski reports Lieberman admitted at an event in Norwich, Conn. last night that his cybersecurity legislation (S 3414) is unlikely to pass in the lame duck session, despite Majority Leader Harry Reid's, D-Nev., plans to give it one more shot. Lieberman said "I think chances are less than 50/50" of the bill getting done, a realistic view in the face of steady opposition from Republicans and industry. Chamber Republicans blocked a vote on the legislation just before recess this summer, and have remained unmoved by the increasingly dire warnings emanating from the Pentagon and other portions of the administration. Not even the cybersecurity draft executive order circulated by the White House has managed to spook the GOP, which appears ready to call the administration's bluff and force Democrats to impose their voluntary security regime over industry and Congressional resistance. Of course even if the Senate managed to act, it would be little more than a political exercise, unless the Democrats manage to re-gain control of the House in the upcoming election.

Researcher Highlights Little-Known Vulnerability: While passwords are a staple of any discussion about cybersecurity standards, the digital keys used by computers to communicate with each other rarely get mentioned. Those keys may be key to preventing future catastrophic cyber attacks, according to one researcher in Helsinki named Tatu Ylönen. He argues that companies often give too many administrators the ability to grant access via the keys, which in turn are left in place for years. Without proper monitoring, unused keys could later be exploited by hackers to gain entry to a system for malicious reasons. Fixing the problem isn't easy, but Ylönen has already formed a consulting team that offers an automated tool that makes sense for larger customers. Regardless, it goes to show that any cybersecurity standards established will have to be flexible enough to incorporate new threats as they emerge and hackers learn to work around existing safeguards. Former Top FCC Lawyer Joins Google: Google confirmed that former FCC general counsel Austin Schlick has joined the search giant's legal team. Schlick left the Commission in June after serving as general counsel for two years. Google declined to give any details on Schlick's role at the company, but the search giant is facing prospective regulatory action on a number of fronts and an antitrust probe by the Federal Trade Commission.