Dive Brief:
- The White House Office of the National Cyber Director will incorporate a data-driven approach as part of the national cybersecurity strategy to measure the performance of federal agencies as well as the U.S. as a whole, Dylan Presman, director for budget and assessment at ONCD said during the keynote of a virtual forum on cybersecurity metrics sponsored by the R Street Institute.
- The administration will analyze cyber performance data in order to better understand where future investments need to be made. It will also illustrate how well the government and private sector industry is making progress toward a resilient and secure digital infrastructure.
- Incorporating performance measurements is part of a larger strategy by the Biden administration to develop a more cohesive and resilient cyber infrastructure, following a wave of sophisticated cyberattacks from criminal threat actors and rival nation states.
Dive Insight:
The ONCD, led by Chris Inglis, has been working on the national cybersecurity strategy in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the nation’s ability to deter malicious cyberattacks in the future and more effectively respond and recover from those attacks.
“Tracking cybersecurity performance metrics will support decisions for budgets and spending,” Presman said. “Unless we understand how these responses impact national cybersecurity performance it’s impossible to prioritize resources and funding appropriately.”
Inglis recently traveled overseas to meet with foreign allies to discuss efforts by the Biden administration to strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity infrastructure.
Presman said the administration has been working to reframe the conversation about how government policy can be used as a tool to develop technological policy for the greater good.
“Western governments have largely taken a hands-off approach to the internet to encourage innovation, however dictators and criminals have not,” Presman said. “They’ve often been able to bend the promise of the internet to their will.”
The Office of the National Cyber Director wants to reexamine that paradigm.
The discussion around cybersecurity is too often framed in a negative capacity, in the sense of how does a nation foil the ambition of its adversaries. However the ONCD wants to reframe the discussion by asking what does cybersecurity help us achieve, he said.
ONCD has identified four levels of accountability, Presman said:
- Federal cohesion
- Public and private partnerships
- Aligning resources to aspirations
- Enhancing resilience
