WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) issued the following statement today in anticipation of the Obama Administration’s 60-day Cybersecurity Policy Review Report:
“As members of both the Senate Commerce Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, we meet at the legislative crossroads between our national security and economic security. We believe the time for our government and the private sector to act in a coordinated fashion to combat cyber terror was yesterday.
“The Obama Administration has been hard at work on a comprehensive review of the cyber threat and we applaud their effort.
“We have learned the hard way in recent years that “stovepiped” national security systems and failures in coordination can leave us vulnerable to attack, and that bureaucratic confusion can cripple our response to a disaster. We must apply these lessons to the threat of cyber attack. There is no room for error.
“Our bipartisan legislation, The Cybersecurity Act of 2009, is a roadmap to a secure cyber future – one that effectively brings public and private together.
“We believe the Administration must:
– Raise the profile of cybersecurity by establishing an Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor within the Executive Office of the President. This Advisor must serve as the lead official on all cyber matters – reporting directly to the President and coordinating with the intelligence community, government agencies, Congress, and the private sector.
– Create state and regional cybersecurity centers for small and medium sized businesses. These centers would assist small and medium sized businesses in easily adopting cybersecurity measures.
– Foster innovation and creativity by increasing the federal cybersecurity research and development programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF), and requiring the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to establish measureable cybersecurity standards and best practices that are applicable both to government and the private sector.
– Create an information sharing clearinghouse in which government and industry work together in real time to identify cyber threats and vulnerabilities.
– Create a Cybersecurity Advisory Panel of experts from industry, academia, and non-profit advocacy and civil liberty organizations to review and advise the President.
– Require the President’s Cyber Advisor to put civil liberties protections front and center. Our aim is to improve the nation’s security – and by this we mean, the security of American lives, property, and civil liberties.
– Clarify the President’s authority to protect cyber systems in the face of an attack or imminent high-level threat to national security, comparable to the way that the President exercised his authority on September 11, 2001, to temporarily ground all aircraft in U.S. airspace.
– Above all, we strongly encourage all agencies, Congressional Committees, and businesses to work together. Cybersecurity is an issue that cuts across every sector of our government and our economy. Territorial fights are not new to Washington, but on the issue of cybersecurity, infighting could have devastating consequences.”
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