This week, President Barack Obama announced his plan to create the Federal Privacy Council as part of a massive Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP) that will affect how federal agencies protect the private data of U.S. citizens. CNAP will also support IT modernization and promote cybersecurity research and development in the public and private sectors.
The president’s 2017 budget proposal includes $19 billion for funding cybersecurity efforts and the CNAP. This includes more than $3 billion toward modernizing the federal government’s outdated IT systems that are not only costly to maintain, but also a cybersecurity liability. The CNAP also includes funding to support the Federal Privacy Council. The president’s unprecedented plan is a 35 percent increase in government-wide cybersecurity spending from the 2016 federal budget.
“More and more, keeping America safe is not just a matter of more tanks, more aircraft carriers—not just a matter of bolstering our security on the ground. It also requires us to bolster our security online, and with this plan, we intend to modernize federal IT by replacing and retiring outdated systems that are vulnerable to attack,” Obama said during his plan’s announcement.
The executive order establishing the Federal Privacy Council was first announced in December 2015 by Shaun Donovan, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Obama’s executive order focuses on protecting the privacy of U.S. citizens and how important the public’s trust is to effective governing.
Creating the Federal Privacy Council will result in members from different federal agencies:
- Developing recommendations for the Office of Management and Budget on federal government privacy policies and requirements.
- Coordinating and sharing ideas, best practices and approaches for protecting privacy and implementing appropriate privacy safeguards.
- Assessing and recommending how best to address the hiring, training and professional development needs of the federal government with respect to privacy matters.
- Performing other privacy-related functions, consistent with law, as designated by the council chair.
Obama continued, “We’re also going to create the first ever federal chief information security officer who can oversee these activities across agencies and across the federal government, as well as make sure the federal government is interacting more effectively with the private sector, which obviously contains a huge amount of vital, critical infrastructure and has to be protected.”
The CISO will serve under federal Chief Information Officer Tony Scott as a deputy CIO.
CNAP also calls for more attention to cybersecurity education and recruiting the brightest IT security professionals in the U.S. to help protect the nation from cyber threats and privacy breaches.
“One of the biggest gaps between the public sector and the private sector is in our IT space, and it makes everybody’s information vulnerable,” Obama explained. “We’re going to reform the way the government manages and responds to cyber threats; we’ll invest in cybersecurity education; we’re going to build on the work we’ve already done to recruit the best talent in America in IT and in cybersecurity.”
Establishing the Federal Privacy Council will help educate the entire federal workforce to better protect data privacy and exchange best practices across agencies.
Tori Easterly, product director for networking and security training at Global Knowledge, said, “Global Knowledge is excited the role our cybersecurity training portfolio including official International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) training will potentially help federal agencies and contractors address information privacy challenges, enabling us to create a privacy training solution specific to your agency and/or job role.”
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