Hundreds of CEOs from the nation’s largest companies said they...
Hundreds of CEOs from the nation’s largest companies said they would support a voluntary federal program to develop cybersecurity best practices, said a memo made public Wednesday by Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. (http://xrl.us/bodpfb). The comments conflict with arguments…
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made last year by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that American businesses would oppose even voluntary cybersecurity standards because they would permit the government to impose new obligations on them (CD July 27 p12). The rationale was employed by the Chamber in its efforts to sink the revised Cybersecurity Act, S-3414. “Our review of the companies’ answers to these questions shows that the Chamber of Commerce’s vehement opposition to the legislation was not shared by many companies in the private sector,” Rockefeller’s memo said. Last Fall, Rockefeller asked CEOs from the nation’s top 500 companies to detail their cybersecurity practices (http://xrl.us/bnqgpz) (CD Sept. 20 p8). Rockefeller specifically asked the CEOs what cybersecurity best practices they employ, how they were developed, what role the government played in the development of their cybersecurity practices, and what concerns companies have with conducting cybersecurity risk assessments in coordination with the government, among other questions. Rockefeller then said he wrote to the CEOs because he wanted to “hear directly from our nation’s business community to understand their views on cybersecurity ... without the filter of Beltway lobbyists.” Responses from the companies revealed that lawmakers should continue their work to advance cybersecurity legislation this Congress, the memo said. Many of the companies said they support a federal program to facilitate cooperation between the private and public sectors to evaluate the nation’s greatest cybersecurity risks and ways to address them, according to the memo. “The concerns with such a program were generally related to the manner in which it would be implemented, not with the fundamental notion of whether to create it,” the memo said. “Companies understand that the cyber threats we face are real and they understand that the federal government must play an important role in the nation’s cybersecurity moving forward,” Rockefeller said in a news release. “The companies’ responses will be a great resource as we refine much-needed cybersecurity legislation to improve and deepen the collaboration between our government and private sector.” Last week Rockefeller introduced S-21, the Cybersecurity and American Cyber Competitiveness Act (http://xrl.us/bob2o7), a bill that expresses the sense of Congress that legislation is required to secure the nation’s communications networks from cyberattacks.