Pentagon, DHS in Cybersecurity Pact
The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security made an agreement to let the two agencies share staff and intelligence to protect U.S. cyber networks. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said they signed a memorandum of agreement that will send Pentagon analysts to Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. DHS, in turn, will send a full-time executive and a support team to the National Security Agency.
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The memorandum, made public Wednesday, will allow the National Security Agency to keep DHS in the loop on intelligence, officials said. It'll also allow Homeland Security to brief the Pentagon on civil rights. Among the Homeland Security staff heading to the National Security Agency are experts in “privacy” and “civil liberties,” officials said.
The agreement comes as efforts to finish an omnibus cybersecurity bill in the Senate appear to have fizzled. The two big-ticket cybersecurity bills -- S-773, by Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and S-3480, by Homeland Security Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. -- are still too far apart and there are too many questions over jurisdiction for it to pass in the lame-duck session (CD Sept 30 p11).
The Obama administration stressed that the Pentagon-Homeland Security agreement doesn’t make any structural or jurisdictional changes. “This structure is designed to put the full weight of our combined capabilities and expertise behind every action taken to protect our vital cyber networks, without altering the authorities or oversight of our separate but complementary missions,” Gates and Napolitano said a joint statement.