Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is supporting the Obama administration’s proposal to expand the cybersecurity responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), during a committee hearing Monday on the proposal.
“One important area of agreement is the recognition that the Department of Homeland Security must be given the job of protecting the dot gov and dot com domains. In other words, DHS will be the new sheriff in cyber town that we need”, Lieberman said, referring to agreement between the White House proposal and legislation he introduced with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.).Among other things, the Obama administration proposal would shift responsibility for implementation of the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) from the Office of Management and Budget to DHS.
“The administration proposal would update the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and formalize DHS’ current role in managing cybersecurity for the federal government’s civilian computers and networks, in order to provide departments and agencies with a shared source of expertise. The legislation would also promote the ongoing transformation of FISMA toward increased automation and performance based security measures”, administration officials said in joint testimony submitted to the committee.
Testifying before the committee were Philip Reitinger, deputy under secretary for national protection and programs directorate at DHS; Robert J. Butler, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy; Ari Schwartz, senior internet policy advisor with National Institute of Standards and Technology; and Jason Chipman, senior counsel to the deputy US Attorney General. Read More
