The United States of America must beef up its cybersecurity and private actors should play a key role in these efforts, according to a new report.
The Cyberspace Solarium Commission is the name of a bipartisan group appointed by the US congress to develop a consensus about how the country’s government should defend itself against hack attacks.
The finished report presented 75 recommendations about how to strengthen the country’s cybersecurity. The list included giving military personnel more training for cyberoperations and that congress should create committees dedicated to cyberoperations.
It also stated that in order to create a more robust defence, the nation’s private actors would be required to step up their cybersecurity a notch as a lot of the country’s critical infrastructure is owned by the private sector. “That is why we make certain recommendations, such as establishing a cloud security certification or modernising corporate accountability reporting requirements,” the lawmakers wrote.
“We do not want to saddle the private sector with onerous and counterproductive regulations, nor do we want to force companies to hand over their data to the federal government. We are not the Chinese Communist Party and, indeed, our best path to beating our adversaries is to stay free and innovative.
“But we need C-suite executives to take cyber seriously since they are on the front line. With support from the federal government, private sector entities must be able to act with speed and agility to stop cyberattacks from breaking out in their networks and the larger array of networks on which the nation relies.”
That last part could be a big challenge as many businesses still treat their digital defences as an afterthought, according to a recent EY study.
The EY report claimed only one-third of organisations said cybersecurity functions were discussed in the planning stage of a new business initiative.
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
