The Department of Homeland Security has selected a team at theUniversity of Texas at San Antonio to guide development of cybersecurity information sharing standards and collaboration between the private sector and government.
The $2 million annual grant, renewable for a total of five years, funds theInformation Sharing and Analysis Organizations Standards Organization.
“This is an incredible win for UTSA,” said Greg White, director of UTSA’sCenter for Infrastructure Assurance and Security, which applied for the grant. “This is the single organization in the nation that will be creating the national standards for sharing and analyzing information in cybersecurity as directed by the White House.”
UTSA will be partnering with the Logistics Management Institute, a management consulting firm for government agencies, and the Retail Cyber Intelligence Sharing Center, an information and analysis organization with a list of supporting companies that includes JCPenney Co. Inc., Lowe’s Cosc Inc., Nike and Target Corp.
The award stems from an executive order President Barack Obama issued in February to develop such standards. Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations “are considered integral to national efforts to promote secure, rapid and widespread information sharing that helps organizations detect and block increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats,” according to a news release sent Friday afternoon.
“The ISAO standards developed by the University of Texas at San Antonio team will reflect the most effective and innovative ideas from the private and public sectors,” said Andy Ozment, Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications.
It was unclear Friday whether the standards would lead to regulations.
White said it would be important for entities to share information both on cybersecurity threats and breaches.
“This is not intended to be some government oversight of information sharing entities,” White said. “This is everybody in the community recognizes the need for sharing information, so whatever we need to do to get people to share, that’s what we’re going to be working toward.”
White said the standards organization would be hosting open public forums around the country to gather input.
“Ultimately what’s being created here is the standards office, the information security analysis organization standards office, and that standards office is going to be responsible for seeking public, private input on what standards should be,” he said. “Along with the standards, we’ll establish guidelines and templates for people who want to form their own information sharing organizations.”
He said the last part of the grant would cover outreach, helping people get started on establishing information sharing organizations “to make sure the standards, the templates and the guidelines and everything that we produce are as accurate and as helpful as possible.”
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