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Advice Follows BSA-Convened Industry Meeting with Top White House Official
The Obama Administration should open up the development of national cyber security policy to more industry participation, share more threat information with industry, launch a comprehensive national cyber security research and development (R&D) program, and preserve the government’s option to acquire commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology to meet its various needs, a high-tech industry group says.
The Business Software Alliance (BSA) made the recommendations yesterday in a document submitted to Melissa Hathaway, the Acting Senior Director for Cyber Space at the White House National and Homeland Security Councils.
In a meeting with industry leaders on March 5, convened by BSA and including other high-tech groups, Hathaway asked for input on several questions including:
The eight-page BSA document answers these questions in considerable detail, reflecting input from BSA’s membership of leading global information technology (IT) providers.
“The private sector owns and operates approximately 85% of the critical infrastructure of the United States, so it is imperative that we have an effective, two-way government-industry partnership with greater transparency and clearer operating procedures,” said Robert Holleyman, President and CEO of BSA.
“It is especially important to preserve industry’s ability to provide government customers with the most diverse and innovative set of IT solutions at the lowest possible cost,” Holleyman added. “Any proposals to impose inflexible mandates or preferences for specific technology models would run counter to the Obama Administration’s commitments to fiscal responsibility and to promoting the widespread use of transformative technologies by civilian, defense, and intelligence agencies.”
The full document is posted online at www.bsa.org.
Editor’s Note
BSA President and CEO Robert Holleyman and BSA Manager of Information Security Policy Franck Journoud are highly regarded experts on cyber security and are available for interviews on this topic.
The Business Software Alliance (www.bsa.org) is the voice of the world's commercial software industry and its hardware partners before governments and in the international marketplace. BSA members include Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Bentley Systems, CA, Cisco Systems, CNC Software/Mastercam, Corel, CyberLink, Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corporation, Dell, Embarcadero, HP, IBM, Intel, Intuit, McAfee, Microsoft, Minitab, PTC, Quark, Quest Software, Rosetta Stone, SAP, Siemens, Sybase, Symantec, Synopsys, and The MathWorks.
Amos Sneadmedia@bsa.org202-715-1531
United States
