There is a new bill being discussed on Capitol Hill. It is the known as the Cybersecurity Act of 2009. People are worried because they say it gives the president the authority to shut down the Internet if there is a cybersecurity emergency. I was concerned about this myself. So I read through the entire draft of the bill.The overall goal is to protect the economy from cybersecurity threats. This is a bill covering many areas. Here are some highlights that I found interesting. It would establish a national certification program for security professionals. It would also require professionals to be licensed in a couple years before doing business in the cybersecurity field.
This bill also discusses creation of a new secure domain name addressing system (DNS). I assume this would protect against people spoofing domain names they do not legally have. There is also to be a federal cyber scholarship to be established by the National Science Foundation (NSF). There is also to be cybersecurity competitions administered by the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST).
It will be most interesting to see whether this bill passes as written. For more information on cybersecurity in general, consult the Black of Hat blog.
