WASHINGTON-The government should play the role of facilitator rather than regulator as it tries to ensure that network and communications infrastructure are secure, said a panel of witnesses at a cybersecurity hearing Tuesday. The House cybersecurity subcommittee held a hearing to find out what industry thinks should be done to keep networks secure.
The general consensus was that the government should coordinate communications and information sharing between both the private and public sectors. An example that should be followed, said Frank Ianna, is the FCC’s network reliability and interoperability council. Ianna is president of AT&T network services for AT&T Corp.
This public-private partnership will be able to combat problems as they arise, recognizing that each incident will be at least slightly different than what has been seen before, said Ianna. “Wi-Fi has become very popular, but I guarantee you that there will be cybersecurity problems, and the problems will be different than what we’ve seen before,” said Ianna. “It is the baseline of what we know augmented by specific events” that is used for cybersecurity.
One concern expressed by Ianna and others was safeguarding proprietary and security information. “We are concerned about sharing information with too many entities and that information then becoming public. That might not be in our best interests,” said Ianna.
Although the high-tech industry has as parochial interest in keeping information out of the public domain, the best security is based on openness, cautioned Whitfield Diffie, chief security officer of Sun Microsystems Inc.
The message of government facilitating rather than dictating seemed to resonate with the chairman of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security. Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) said that a core component of homeland security is to “come to grips with technology” and the fact that technology is constantly changing.
For this reason, Cox said he works hard not to write technologies into law so that the law does not become outdated and outmoded.
