Federal oversight into Cyber Security is already in place for many utility providers. I work for one such company and we're required by Federal regulations to abide by standards that are quite difficult to achieve, especially since they're being updated often.

The biggest problem that I can see at this point is that the standards required don't always make sense to each individual organization. There are some Do's and Dont's that may or may not apply in each case, yet compliance is mandatory and fines are stiff.

The electrical industry already had standards in place dealing with this very subject. In the last few years, the Federal government has jumped into the pool and decided it will dictate what's best. It does this in the interest of protecting the Critical Infrastructure known as the electrical grid. Don't get me wrong, this is definitely an area needing protection. But if the industry was already policing itself, then why fix what wasn't broken?

It's no great leap to see that if the government considers the electrical grid as critical infrastructure and worthy of it's regulation, then that same path of logic (path-o-logic??) could easily see the web as critical infrastructure in as much as modern life depends upon it.

If regulation and compliance are pushed out to the corporate world, additional staffing for business and organizations to deal with compliance could force many small companies out of business if they aren't capable of supporting an IT staff. The amount of man-hours put into compliance here is staggering.

And of course, the last step in this would be for Congress to dictate what software you can run on your home computer. Can you say "We have assumed control!"

And of course, there is the little issue of the Fed's ability to even keep their own house clean!

Of course the Government would then have to create an agency to oversee the private sector as well. Just what we need, a bigger government.