The FISMA Focus IPD

Proposed legislation that would center public- and private-sector cybersecurity collaboration onto a single coordinating entity would fall short in effective engagement, asserts a paper published this month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The paper (.pdf), authored by Rachel Nyswander Thomas as part of a graduate thesis at Georgetown University, is also critical of the status quo. She characterizes it as a host of public-private partnerships that have created pockets of information sharing but can’t hold partners accountable and have made limited progress toward other objectives such as research and development.

Collaboration efforts in the form of Information Sharing and Analysis Centers from the 16 critical infrastructure and key resource sectors recognized by the Homeland Security Department have bumped into the problems of engaging small businesses, widely varying maturity levels of ISACs, and “the sheer quantity of government entities with which any one sector needs to partner.”