The Senate Commerce Committee unanimously approved a bill that would offer cash and non-cash prizes for cybersecurity innovations—though it received a bit of a haircut from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.
The Cybersecurity Competitions to Yield Better Efforts to Research the Latest Exceptionally Advanced Problems—or CYBER LEAP—Act of 2020 instructs the Commerce Secretary to establish national grand challenges to “achieve high-priority breakthroughs in cybersecurity by 2028” in five areas: the economics of a cyberattack, cyber training, emerging technology, reimagining digital identity and federal agency resilience.
It passed the committee today with an amendment from Lee eliminating the Commerce Secretary’s authority to establish additional grand challenges. Another Lee amendment clarifies that an advisory committee the bill calls for to inform aspects such as metrics for judging the competitions would not be compensated beyond travel reimbursements.
The grand challenges idea was originally proposed by leaders of tech companies such as Unisys, Qualcomm and Palo Alto Networks. It is outlined in the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee’s report on creating a cybersecurity “moonshot.” The Commerce Secretary is supposed to take the report’s recommendations into consideration in establishing the challenge competitions.
The size and other details of the prizes are not spelled out in the legislation. And whereas the original moonshot report counts on large appro ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
