WASHINGTON, D.C.-- Chairman John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV today gave opening remarks at the joint hearing with the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs titled "The Cybersecurity Partnership Between the Public Sector and our Government: Protecting our National and Economic Security." Below are his prepared remarks:

Long ago we made the decision that in this country, private companies would build and own our key transportation, communications, and energy networks.  That was and
still is a good decision.  Given the opportunity to earn a reasonable profit on their investment, private companies built our railroads, our wireline telephone network, our aviation system, our pipelines, and many other physical assets that have fueled our country’s phenomenal economic success.  This isn’t just our past.  It’s our future too.  With the encouragement and support of federal, state, and local governments, private companies are hard at work today building the broadband network that will be key to our country’s success in the 21^st century. 

What we have always asked these companies for in return is that they serve not just the narrow interests of their shareholders, but also the broader, general interests
of this country.  As those of us who serve on the Commerce Committee know very well, getting big things done in this country always requires a partnership between the public and private sectors.  That’s the kind of partnership we will need to address the grave new threat our country faces today – the threat of cyber attacks.

Back in 2009, when I started working on this issue with Senator Snowe, cybersecurity
was an exotic idea.  Today, four years later, it is a household word.  Almost every day, we read about another company, or another government agency, that has been electronically attacked by adversaries trying to cause economic damage or searching for sensitive information.

It’s not a threat we can address through a traditional military response, and it’s not a
threat that individual companies can handle through their normal risk mitigation practices.  It’s a threat that challenges our traditional notion of the public and private spheres.  A cyber attack against a government agency or a defense contractor is an attack against our nation.  But so is an attack on a private company that provides power or clean water to millions of Americans.  An attack against a privately owned
and operated piece of our nation’s critical infrastructure is an attack on all of us.

Since I have been working on this issue, I’ve had a lot of good, productive discussions with leaders in our business community, our military, and in other government
agencies who understand this threat and have good ideas about how we can tackle
it.  But we’ve also wasted a lot of time, by turning an urgent national security issue into a partisan political fight.  Back in 2010, we passed a cyber bill out of the Commerce Committee unanimously, without a vote.  By the fall of 2012, we couldn’t even get enough votes to close debate on the Senate floor, even though our country’s top national security leaders were urging us to act.

The Obama Administration got tired of waiting for us.  I can’t blame them. This is a problem that is growing worse every day.  On February 12, 2013, President Obama released an Executive Order that takes some very important steps to start dealing with our cybersecurity problems.  The order marshals the resources and the expertise we have in many different federal agencies to start strengthening our country’s ability to defend ourselves from cyber attacks.

The Obama Administration worked very hard to make this Executive Order a welcoming
invitation to the private sector to work together on this problem.  It seeks to formalize and strengthen the working relationships many companies already have with our cybersecurity experts in the federal government. One of the most important initiatives in the Executive Order is to start a process at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that will develop cybersecurity standards and best practices with U.S. companies.

We are going to hear more about the Executive Order from our witnesses today, and we are going hear a lot more about cybersecurity in the 113^th Congress.  The Senators sitting at this dais today – and many more who are not sitting up here – understand what an urgent issue this is.  We understand that some of steps we need to take to defend our people and our critical infrastructure cannot be accomplished by a presidential order. We have to work with each other.  We have to trust each other.  We
have to move forward.