SAN FRANCISCO—Legislation laying out the specifics of prize competitions meant to engage all of society in answering cybersecurity’s biggest and most difficult questions is emerging from the Senate Commerce Committee, according to an industry representative working on the effort.
“There’s draft legislation to put resources behind it,” said John Davis, vice president and federal chief security officer for Palo Alto Networks, at the RSA cybersecurity conference Wednesday.
Davis spoke along with Bradford Willke, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s acting director of stakeholder engagement and cyber infrastructure resilience, and others during a panel discussion on “Next Steps for the Cyber-Moonshot.”
The cybersecurity moonshot refers to a report the president’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee approved at the end of 2018 outlining an ambitious plan for making the internet safe and secure within a decade.
The initiative was supposed to evoke the inspiration of the 1960’s effort that landed Americans on the moon, with a big part of the plan calling for President Trump to make a major announcement akin to President John F. Kennedy’s before a special session of Congress. That never happened, and neither did the institutional infrastructure the report recommended establishing in order to mobilize the astronomical levels of investment the report recommends.
But the president’s advisers—leaders of the information and communications technology industry—have said from the beginning they wouldn’t let the initiative become just another report on the NSTAC shelf. They are now working directly with Congress to establish cyber grand challenges, a key feature of the report.
After the panel discussion, Davis told Nextgov Senate Commerce Committee leadership has drafted legislatio ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
