Our Upcoming Cybersecurity Roadmap Workshop

We are continuing to gather input for the Cybersecurity Roadmap that PSHSB will present to the Commission early next year.  Since early August, we've met with dozens of organizations representing a wide range of interests to help us focus the Roadmap.  To everyone who has participated in these discussions, thank you.  We are at the point where we think it would be beneficial to get as many of these vantage points as possible in the same room for an extended open discussion.
To this end, last week, we announced that on Friday, November 5, 2010, from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., the Bureau will hold a workshop at FCC Headquarters to support the development of the Cybersecurity Roadmap.   Because the Commission Meeting Room can hold only a limited number of people, you must pre-register by November 3rd.  You can do this online.  You also can register by contacting my colleague Deandrea Wilson or calling (202) 418-0703.    As of today, almost 100 people have registered.  If you cannot attend in person, free audio/video coverage of the meeting will be broadcast live with open captioning over the Internet from the FCC's livestream Web page. If you participate this way, you can ask questions by email, which will be manned during the workshop.  We'll try to get to as many of these questions as we can.  We have a great mix of private and non-profit panelists lined up, and we'll be announcing more about the agenda in a few days.  
For those who may be new to this topic, the Roadmap was one of the recommendations in the Public Safety chapter of the National Broadband Plan.  Its purpose is to identify five of the most critical cybersecurity threats to the communications infrastructure and its end-users, and develop a two-year plan for the FCC to address these threats.  The reasoning behind the development of the Roadmap is that the public internet, like other critical communications infrastructure, is under constant assault by malicious traffic and harbors a number of potentially disabling vulnerabilities. 
The discussion at the workshop will explore cybersecurity issues related to the underlying communications network that enables interconnectivity, including secure routing and directory services and on identifying the key security vulnerabilities from an end-user's perspective, whether enterprise or residential.  We will discuss ways to increase awareness of communications reliability and security, incentives for ISPs to implement network security practices, protocols and technologies, and what should be done to help consumers deal with cyber security threats and incidents.
Your input will be important to the development of the roadmap, so we look forward to seeing you at the workshop on November 5.