The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have scheduled a meeting later this month in order to deliberate about potential “outcomes and recommendations” in the wake of an April 21st workshop on optional approaches to cybersecurity in an effort to produce cross-agency guidance. The workshop focused primarily on third-party cybersecurity guidance, the interaction between self-regulatory measures of the private sectors and law enforcement and how regulatory agencies can work together with the private sector to improve self-regulatory procedure. The upcoming meeting will include a presentation on the discoveries from the workshop in April. This series of meetings marks the first time any group has attempted to produce tangible recommendations and guidance on cybersecurity policy, as prior to the April workshop the meeting had previously acted as a “sounding board” for the agencies to trade information about how best tackle current cyber issues, with none of those meetings producing a practical approach or policy to those issues.
According to Commerce Department advisor Clete Johnson, the forum was formed in 2014 with the intention to “help streamline cyber regulations across federal agencies” but that now the interagency forum could “play a role in aligning cyber activities across the federal government.” Johnson furthers believes that “There’s an imperative for the interagency to be a team and for collaboration [with industry] to be coherent.”