Senate to Introduce New Bill to Enhance Cyber Security for Government

Senator Tom Carper, Del.

Since we have been following the cyber security issue very closely over the past several weeks, we were excited to see that the a new bill is being introduced in the Senate today that aims to strengthen the government’s response to this problem. The bill is called the “U.S. Information and Communications Enhancement Act of 2009″ and is an update of the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act, better known as FISMA.

FISMA has been criticized for merely requiring agencies to show they have the proper cyber security policies in place. They don’t have to demonstrate that these policies are actually working. Well, the times have changed and this bill would create a whole new level of security accountability for government agencies, as well as spawn the creation of a council of chief information security officers, which would call on CISOs from each federal agency to share information about threats they’re facing and the best ways to combat them.

The bill, introduced by Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, also calls for the establishment of a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed position as “director of the national office for cyberspace,” to be housed within the Executive Office of the President. This move definitely reinforces comments by Melissa Hathaway, the acting senior director for cyberspace for the Obama administration, at the RSA conference last week.

What do you all think? We always applaud more legislation and accountability when it comes to protecting critical assets against cyber attacks. Should the the White House be leading these efforts? We welcome all thoughts and comments.