DHS Announces HSAC Cybersecurity Subcommittee

Today the DHS Office of Intergovernmental Affairs published a notice in the Federal Register (80 FR 48893-48894) that last week the Secretary had tasked the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) with establishing a new Cybersecurity Committee.

The new committee will address:

∙ Identifying the readiness of the Department's lifeline sectors to meet the emerging cyber threat and provide recommendations for building cross-sector capabilities to rapidly restore critical functions and services following a significant cyber event; and

∙ Providing a more unified approach to support State, Local, Tribal and Territorial cybersecurity.

The HSAC provides the Secretary real-time, real-world, sensing and independent advice to support decision-making across the spectrum of homeland security operations. The new committee will be tasked with providing findings and recommendations that will be submitted to the Homeland Security Advisory Council for their deliberation and vote during a public meeting.

Commentary

There was no specific mention of control system security in this brief notice. Typically what happens is that either the Secretary or the full HSAC would provide specific taskings to the Committee. Those could certainly involve control system security items of interest.

It will be interesting to see who is named to this new Committee. If there is at least one control system vendor or research organization, we can expect to see something specifically addressing control systems issues. If not, it will be catch as catch can and any control system security recommendations will be more generic than useful.