The president on Tuesday signed an executive order establishing a bipartisan commission on cybersecurity, the second such order on the issue in as many days. Both come as part of the Cybersecurity National Action Plan announced by the White House on Monday.
The order establishes the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, which will be housed in the Department of Commerce and comprise 12 members appointed by the president. The commission will be responsible for assisting with implementing components of the national action plan.
Those components include trying to find ways to bolster the federal cybersecurity workforce, in addition to “broad-based education of commonsense cybersecurity practices for the general public.” It will also be tasked with finding ways to ensure greater security in devices connected to the so-called Internet of things.
The commission, which is to consult with national security and law enforcement officials, along with leaders in the tech industry, is instructed to deliver its recommendations to the White House on Dec. 1, little more than a month before the president is set to leave office.
On Monday, the president signed an executive order establishing a permanent Federal Privacy Council to “bring together … privacy officials from across the government” to ensure that privacy standards are “effectively and continuously addressed” during the effort to heighten cybersecurity standards. That effort will involve privacy officials from 25 agencies across the federal government.
The commission will come with an executive director who will be appointed by the secretary of commerce, with the option of additional staff members. Those will come on top of a new, unrelated chief information security officer for the federal government, who will report to U.S. Chief Information Officer Tony Scott.
The president requested a total of $19 billion for cybersecurity in his fiscal 2017 budget request submitted to Congress on Tuesday, though it remains to be seen whether that request will be funded in full. Congressional Republicans have objected to the budget as a whole, pointing out that it would raise spending by $2.5 trillion over the next decade.
The cybersecurity initiative remains a work in progress. President Obama and Vice President Biden were scheduled to meet with members of the administration’s national security and cybersecurity teams shortly before noon on Tuesday to discuss the budget request and priorities included in the cybersecurity plan as they take shape.
Regardless of congressional approval, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel said on Monday, the administration intends to do as much as it can on its own.
“Much of this package we can do under either existing executive authorities, or can get done by driving our existing authorities to the limit,” Daniel said in a call with reporters. “This plan really is as aggressive as we can get under existing authorities. We can do quite a bit of it even without additional resources.”
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However, Daniel added, those additional resources remain “a key part of it.”
