At a House Homeland Security cybersecurity subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, testimony was heard from many leading industry officials on the effects of the Cyber Security Act of 2015 (CISA). The purpose of this hearing was to determine what Congress can do to further assist companies in the buildup of their cyber defenses.
One of the main issues aired in front of the committee was the lack of awareness about this program among SMB’s across the country. According to Ola Sage, founder and CEO of e-Management and CyberRX in Maryland, “In the law itself, there are only two references to small business, which highlights that this law is not directly focused on small businesses.” . In her testimony Sage also raised the issue of the lack of procedural goals that will entice these SMB’s to sign onto what CISA is trying to accomplish.
There was almost unanimous consensus from the panelists that the process of signing up for this program needed to be streamlined so it did not cause problems or discourage smaller entities from signing up. Matthew Eggers of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce emphasized the long term goal of this project which was to create economies of scale with real time sharing so as to allow faster recognition and even defense when it comes to cyber threats. This would replace the human intensive network that is currently slowing down information sharing.