HR 5247 Introduced

Yesterday Rep. Langevin (D, RI) and seven co-sponsors (including 1 Republican) introduced HR 5247, the Executive Cyberspace Authorities Act of 2010. This bill would establish a National Cyber Space Office in the White House that would be responsible for “for coordinating issues relating to achieving an assured, reliable, secure, and survivable information infrastructure and related capabilities for the Federal Government” {§2(b)}.

This office would have budget request approval authority for information protection technology for the entire executive branch, except for “national security systems”. As currently written there is nothing in the bill that would give the new Director any authority over any cyber control systems inside or outside of the government. The legislation is very carefully written to just affect ‘information infrastructure’.

The new Director would have no direct authority over any information security programs outside of the executive branch of the Federal Government. There is one small area of the introduced bill that might end up having some affect on non-governmental information system security initiatives. Section 2(c)(1)(B) requires the new Director to “encourage public-private working groups with representatives from relevant agencies and industry partners to increase information sharing and policy coordination efforts in order to reduce vulnerabilities in the national information infrastructure”. Still, it would have no apparent affect on industrial control system security policy.