NCTA, Others Lay Out Preferred Cybersecurity Bill Ground Rules

Legislation should protect ability of the private sector to quickly respond to cyberthreats

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 4/17/2012 1:12:38 PM

As the House prepares to take up cybersecurity legislation as early as next week, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association has joined with CTIA and other associations to spell out for Congress their baseline for any bill.

In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), NCTA et al. said that cybersecurity legislation should: 1) Improve information sharing and liability protections; 2) ensure industry liability protection from lawsuits or government use of information to regulate other activities; 3) more cybersecurity R&D; 4) update information security laws and better secure government computers; 5) increase public awareness of the threats and education about good cyber "hygiene" and 6) increase public-private collaboration.

"Cyberthreats change so quickly that any legislation must also protect the ability of the private sector to be fast and agile in the detection, prevention, mitigation, and response to cyber-events that can have national or global impact," they argued.

That means one of the elements that should not be in the legislation is government-overseen cybersecurity standards for industry that cable operators and others have argued would reduce that flexibility and be ineffective against targets and technology that move faster than Congress can legislative against.

"Policymakers should not complicate or duplicate existing security-related industry standards with government-specific standards and bureaucracies," they argue. Also joining in the letter were US Telecom, the Telecom Industry Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and associations representing the real estate, gas, railroad, chemical and banking industries.