WASHINGTON, April 26 (UPI) -- President Bush's science and technology council has issued a new plan to coordinate federal interagency cybersecurity R&D.
The Federal Plan for Cyber Security and Information Assurance Research and Development was released last week by the National Science and Technology Council, GovExec.com reported.
The new plan was prepared by representatives of more than 20 federal organizations. Among wide-ranging recommendations, it called for the establishment of standard cybersecurity metrics.
The document is meant to "help guide the research community on where the government's priorities are and to help (government officials) know where to prioritize their investments," Simon Szykman, director of the National Coordination Office for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development, told GovExec.com.
The blueprint was developed exclusively by government officials, Szykman said. But a continuing effort to plan in more detail will incorporate information gathered from private sector researchers through public comments and workshops, he said.
"Certainly having a plan is one thing and executing it is another," Szykman said. "It wasn't the charter to develop investment policy or to develop (a) funding basis for carrying out the plan. This group of people was focused on the (research and development) issues and understanding the existing issues and the priorities."
Alan Paller, research director of the SANS Institute, a Bethesda, Md.-based nonprofit cybersecurity research group, told GovExec.com that the document was extraordinary because of three areas it addressed: the development of new metrics for assessing cybersecurity, evaluation of the security implications of emerging technologies and the integration of security at the beginning of a technological development.
However, the document did not address how recipients of federal funding are to be kept accountable in their research, Paller said.
