Cybersecurity bill sent to president

The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved and sent to President Bush a bill designed to fund research and workforce training in computer security.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved and sent to President George W. Bush a bill designed to fund research and workforce training in computer security.

Representative Sherwood Boehlert, a Republican from New York and the chief sponsor of the legislation, said for too long cybersecurity has not been a research priority in the U.S. While the IT industry focused on making computers cheaper, faster and easier to use, the market did not put a premium on security, and government turned its attention elsewhere, Boehlert said in a release.

In an age of terrorism such willful ignorance about cybersecurity must end, he said.

A spokesman for the House Committee on Science, which Boehlert chairs, said the committee is unaware of opposition to the bill by President Bush, whose signature is needed to make the bill a law.

The Cyber Security Research and Development Act (H.R. 3394), which passed on a voice vote, calls for $903 million to fund cybersecurity research centers, undergraduate program grants, community college grants and fellowships created by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Other programs and grants funded under the bill would be created by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The cybersecurity research centers would focus on computer and network security and would be created with universities, businesses, other government agencies or independently. NSF’s other programs under the legislation would work with colleges and universities to improve undergraduate and master’s degree programs on cybersecurity. The NSF fellowships would go to doctoral students who pursue computer security degrees.

NIST’s programs would establish university and industry partnerships to build research centers that focus on information security issues of particular interest to businesses, and encourage senior researchers and post-doctoral fellows to pursue security studies.

Passage of the bill represents a tremendous leap forward for policymakers as they seek to combat the specter of cyber terrorism, Tom Santaniello, manager of U.S. public policy for the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) said in a release. Through public-private partnerships, the bill will help create an elite corps of highly-trained cyber security experts who will lead U.S. defense forces into the realm of cyber warfare, he said.