Posted by Mark Weatherford, Deputy Undersecretary for Cybersecurity
Last week, I talked about the not too long ago-introduced Cybersecurity Act of 2012 and the aspects of the legislation that would improve the protection of the federal executive branch networks and assist preserve the American public protected from theft, fraud, and loss of individual and monetary data. Nowadays I’d like to go over how the legislation would improve the safety and resiliency of the nation’s critical infrastructure — from banking and monetary methods, to power plants and electric grids, to transportation and shipping hubs.
DHS leads the nation’s vital infrastructure protection and cybersecurity efforts, but the federal government can’t do it alone. The huge vast majority of essential infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector, and the landscape is continuously altering as new and more sophisticated threats emerge. DHS is focused on constructing and strengthening partnerships across all amounts of government and with the personal sector in order to improve data sharing, assistance cyber incident response, and make cyberspace basically safer and a lot more safe.
The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 clarifies DHS’ authority to provide support to sector and state, nearby, tribal and territorial governments and establishes a risk mitigation framework to make certain that companies supplying the Nation’s most crucial services are instituting a baseline degree of cybersecurity. This proposal would leverage the experience of the personal sector requiring the Nation’s most vital infrastructure adopt the cybersecurity practices and technologies that perform very best on their networks.
It also removes barriers to sharing cybersecurity data among industry and the federal government by offering immunity from other laws for the purpose of sharing this kind of cybersecurity info with DHS. At the exact same time, the legislation mandates robust privacy oversight, such as criminal penalties for misuse, to make sure that voluntarily shared info does not impinge on person privacy and civil liberties.
The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 aligns closely with the Administration’s cybersecurity legislative proposal, and will allow DHS and our partners to continue to perform with each other to safe cyberspace, defend our nation’s essential infrastructures, and advance our economic and security interests.
