As we reflect on the past year at the NTSC, we recognize that we have much to be thankful for this year, despite all the challenges the pandemic has presented to us, and to our colleagues across the cyber community. Over the course of this week, we would like to share some of our most memorable achievements including our policy, programming and partnering efforts.
In January of this year, the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee Act of 2020 was enacted through the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This legislative effort began nearly two years earlier when the NTSC spearheaded the initiative and working with Congressman John Katko (R-NY), the first bill to create this committee was introduced in the House as the Cybersecurity Committee Act of 2019. The language from Congressman Katko’s bill was then included in the Solarium Commission Report released in May of 2020 as a recommendation, and then later Senator David Perdue (R-GA) introduced a companion bill in the Senate, which was then added to the 2020 NDAA.
On December 10th, the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee held its inaugural meeting in Mclean, Virginia, and the NTSC board members Marene Allison, CISO at Johnson & Johnson, and Ron Green, CSO at Mastercard were among the executives appointed to the committee. Ron Green was announced as the committee’s Vice Chair with Tom Fanning, the CEO of Southern Company heading up the committee as the Chair.
The creation of this committee is a major step forward in advancing one of the NTSC top policy priorities – strengthening the public/private sector partnership, and we are immensely proud of the role we played in establishing this committee. We look forward to watching the committee continue to grow and advance the collaboration required to protect our nation.