Morning Security Brief: Disaster Recovery, Transparent Cybersecurity, Hamas vs. al Qaeda Militants, Cybercrime Revolution

♦ Four senators from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Reform have written a letter to homeland security chief Janet Napolitano criticizing FEMA's national disaster recovery plan. Among their many criticisms, the senators say that FEMA's national disaster recovery plan is still ambiguous about which federal agency takes leadership during a disaster and does not "clearly state roles and responsibilities" of responding federal agencies to ensure coherent coordination during recovery operations.

♦ The Obama administration today will release a portion of the classified Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, reports The New York Times. Written during the Bush administration, President Obama will release portions of the document to demonstrate "that the government has a clear and workable strategy for protecting the nation’s computer systems."

♦ Could rising tensions between the Hamas ruling faction and al Qaeda-inspired militants in the Gaza Strip lead to fratricide? Reuters reports that al Qaeda-inspired militants have increasingly  attacked Hamas security members and offices in recent weeks. "Hamas is capable of besieging and weakening them but that would be costly on political, security and moral levels because the conflict would be among groups that hold the same religious ideology," political analyst Talal Okal told Reuters.

♦ A new study from Imperva, a data security company, reports that cybercriminals have organized themselves into a hierarchical structure that resembles the industrialization of the modern factory in the late 19th century , reports Infosecurity.com. The division of labor can be split into four job categories: researchers, farmers, dealers, and technical innovators.

♦ Preston Gralla over at ComputerWorld.com discusses what information Facebook and Comcast will turn over about its users if requested by police or the intelligence community. "The companies are all, in their own ways, following the law," he writes. "Still, it's disconcerting to see all that's available about you, if the documents are real and to be trusted." Gralla relies on documents posted to the Cryptome Web site, which last week posted Microsoft's "spy" manual.