Recent Attacks Highlight Importance of CSRIC Work, Council Chairman Says
Recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, “tragically [put] an exclamation point” on the FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council work on telecom infrastructure security and reliability, said CSRIC Chairman John Schanz, Comcast Cable chief network officer. CSRIC's work on reliability of 911 systems is critical to police having situational awareness “that will make possible big data added to emergency response,” said Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson after a presentation at the group's meeting by Working Group 1. It's working on recommendations for rerouting 911 calls between public safety answering points and on recommendations on aspects of location-based routing that use latitude and longitude information and other information.
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“We would ask that as you guys work on your task, that you also think about some of those secondary value propositions associated” with that work, Simpson said. Working Group 1 is on track to submit a final version of its recommendations on location-based 911 call routing issues by CSRIC's planned March 16 meeting, with a draft version set to be completed by Feb. 15, said group co-Chairman Jeff Cohen, APCO chief counsel. Recommendations on 911 call rerouting best practices is set to be ready by Sept. 14, Cohen said.
Most CSRIC working groups said Thursday they're making steady progress on reports and recommendations across a wide swath of cybersecurity and other telecom issues. Six CSRIC working groups deal at least partially with aspects of telecom infrastructure security, including two on specific cybersecurity issues (see 1506240053). Simpson praised the working groups for their overall progress, with several groups saying they'll have reports and recommendations ready for CSRIC consideration at the council's March 16 meeting.
Simpson raised concerns about Working Group 3's progress on reports and recommendations for improving the overall functionality of the emergency alert system, saying he and other FCC officials “don't have a warm fuzzy that this is being gone after by participants” as a priority. The FCC needs to see additional evidence of risk reduction going forward, Simpson said. Working Group 3 reports would examine EAS security, the provision of EAS in languages other than English and the development of an EAS operational handbook for use by broadcasters and other EAS participants. A report on EAS security that had been set for presentation at Thursday's meeting was delayed until March for “a number of reasons,” said group co-Chairman Kelly Williams, an NAB senior director. A report on multilingual EAS alerts remains set for presentation at the March meeting and a report on the new EAS handbook is still to be ready by June, but can be pushed to another date depending on FCC needs, Williams said.
Working Group 2, which is looking at possible best practices for improving security of wireless emergency alerts, is “working feverishly” to have a report on that issue ready by the March 16 meeting, said group co-Chairman Farrokh Khatibi, Qualcomm engineering director. A second report on ways to encourage local and state officials' use of emergency alerts at a local geo-targeted level is set to be finished by September, Khatibi said. The working group is incorporating social media use of emergency alerts into its work, said co-Chairman Francisco Sanchez, public information officer with the Harris County, Texas, Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management.
Working Group 5, focusing on cybersecurity information sharing in the communications sector, won't have a full report ready until March 2017 but is set to have a study on cases of sector use of information sharing ready by March, said group co-Chairman Chris Boyer, AT&T assistant vice president-global public policy. The use cases study will examine instances of both sharing between private sector entities and sharing between the private sector and government, Boyer said. A study on barriers to industry information sharing and possible solutions is set to be ready by June, he said. Working Group 7, which is examining ways to improve cybersecurity training in the communications sector workforce, also plans to have a final report ready by March 2017.
Working Group 4A, which is examining submarine cable resiliency, is working to have a report on existing gaps in coordination between federal, state and local agencies on submarine cable issues ready in time for it to be used as a reference for the FCC's rulemaking aimed at collecting systematic information on submarine cable outages, said group co-Chairman Kent Bressie, a Harris Wiltshire lawyer who represents submarine cable clients. Comments on the NPRM, adopted in September (see 1509170047 and 1511030019), were due after our deadline.