National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace

Identifies national critical infrastructures: agriculture, food, water, public health, emergency services, government, defense industrial base, information and telecommunications, energy, transportation, banking and finance, chemicals and hazardous materials, and postal and shipping. Sees cyberspace as the control system of the country, composed of millions of interconnected computers, servers, routers, and switches essential to economy and national security. Aims to engage Americans to secure their contact points with cyberspace in order to help coordinate a national cybersecurity effort. Strategic objectives are: prevent cyber attacks against America’s critical infrastructures, reduce national vulnerability to cyber attacks, and minimize damage and recovery time from cyber attacks that occur. Argues the private sector is best equipped to respond to evolving cyber threat, but a public-private effort is necessary. Priorities for cyberspace security are: a national cyberspace security response system, vulnerability reduction program, awareness and training program, securing governments’ cyberspace, and national and international cooperation. Eight major initiatives for cyberspace security response are: establish public-private architecture for national-level cyber incidents, develop tactical and strategic analysis of cyber attacks and vulnerability assessments, encourage development of private sector capability to share a synoptic view of cyberspace health, expand Cyber Warning and Information Network to support role of DHS in coordinating cyber crisis management, improve national incident management, coordinate voluntary participation in developing national public-private continuity and contingency plans, exercise cybersecurity continuity plans for federal system, and improve public-private information sharing for cyber threat reduction.