Cyber Info Sharing: The 1st Step Towards Fighting at Machine Speed

by Co-founder, immixGroup

Now that the President has officially signed the Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA), how is cyber information sharing between companies in the private sector, and governments in the public sector actually going to happen?

What technologies and skills will be needed to operate within this new paradigm in the coming years?

Long considered a key component of how our nation will defend itself from potentially cataclysmic cyber attacks on financial, transportation, communication and other critical systems, cyber information sharing also has vocal opponents.

What information are we actually talking about?  And how can this information ultimately be used to resist attacks against the power grid, for example, at machine speed? These are the big questions that government IT leaders from DHS, NSA, NERC and others are planning to discuss at the AFCEA Bethesda Cyber Symposium next Tuesday, January 26.

Designed to collaboratively enlist the country to fight across 16 critical infrastructure industries, CISA is a combination of three bills knit together, during a rather contentious legislative debate process.  Some see it as a threat to privacy while others see it as a big piece of the strategy to prevent a large-scale cyber calamity described in Ted Koppel’s new book, Lights Out: a Cyberattack, a Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath.

The legislative debate on CISA is over.  Now it’s time to discuss next steps with enough detail to start building an understanding and trust among the thousands of players within each — and across all — the critical infrastructure sectors. This is essential for both private and public sectors to get aligned and use our technology for the common purpose of protecting without creating a system that could lead to abuse of an innocent company or individual.