A letter to Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV), cosigned by 30 privacy and civil liberties advocacy groups, has raised serious concerns about the lack of privacy protections in regard to personally identifiable  information shared with government under cybersecurity legislation soon to be taken up by the Senate. This issue is yet another hurdle to getting the 60 votes needed for the Senate to proceed to Floor consideration of the bill, and may prove to be a major factor whether cybersecurity legislation is enacted this year.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2012, sponsored by Sens. Lieberman (I-CT) and Collins (R-ME) would give the Department of Homeland Security lead authority to oversee the flow of information, including sharing information provided by the private sector to the National Security Agency. The 30 cosignatories of the letter believe this gives the intelligence community the ability to access and collect individual personal information. Moreover, the bill allows the government to use the information for criminal investigations and prosecution unrelated to cybersecurity, and provides overly broad immunity for those sharing the information.

The bill recently passed by the House, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2012, came under similar criticisms and, even though amendments were added that sought to address those concerns before passage, there is continuing debate whether they went far enough.In addition to privacy concerns, there is a great deal of disagreement whether DHS should be put in charge of the nation's cybersecurity efforts and enforcement. The Lieberman bill would give DHS the authority to conduct risk assessments of “covered critical infrastructure” – sectors which are considered most critical to the nation’s economy and security, such as the electric grid and water systems – and impose mandatory risk-based performance standards enforced through thi^rd party audits. An alternative approach, sponsored by Sen. McCain, focuses on incentivizing voluntary information sharing between the government and the private sector to address the cyber threat, similar to the bill passed by the House last month. Majority Leader Reid hopes to bring the cybersecurity measure to the Floor late May or early June.

In the meantime,  White House officials including DHS and the National Security Council, provided a Senate briefing on cyber attacks on natural gas pipelines. The attacks involved spear phishing using an email attachment to allow a hacker to enter the computer network. The email appeared to be sent from someone known to the recipient. It has also been reported that the pipeline companies were aware of the exploit, notified authorities, and were told to allow the attack to continue so that proper forensics and attribution could be conducted. Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said senior administration officials met with Senate staffers on Monday to brief them on the cyber threats facing critical infrastructure. Hayden noted that the briefing was "intended to provide staff with an appreciation for the cyber threat facing the nation as the Senate prepares to consider new legislative authorities that could help the United States Government prevent and more quickly respond to cyber intrusions and attacks.The White House has endorsed the Lieberman bill.

The Administration announced today that nine major utilities and electricity suppliers will commit to providing more than 15 million households access to data about their own energy use with a simple click of an online “Green Button.” These utilities have agreed to base their Green Buttons on a common technical standard developed in collaboration with a public-private partnership supported by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
"The Green Button Initiative will help consumers monitor and manage their energy consumption. We believe that engaging consumers as a crucial stakeholder in the process will help us achieve national energy policy goals, deliver important societal benefits and realize important advancements in the utility value chain," said Connie Durcsak, UTC President and CEO, in a press release supporting this project. Read more »

California utilities Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison are collaborating to deliver "Green Button" customer energy data to about six million California customers. By clicking on the Green Button, up to 13 months of past energy consumption data is instantly exported into customer- and computer-friendly standard formats. The data will be delivered in standardized file formats for easy export to other applications. According to a White House blog post, the expectation is that access to this information will inspire innovative consumer applications and devices from entrepreneurs, businesses and students.

The Green Button system is based on a developing standard Open Automated Data Exchange (Open ADE). The particular standard for that common format, known as Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI), was finalized in a 1.0 version in October 2011; the federal government wants to make it a national smart grid standard.

According to reports on blogs such as Earth2Tech and GreenTechGrid other utilities including Southern California Edison, Glendale Power & Light, Oncor and Pepco Holdings will announce that they will also offer the feature later this year.

In collaboration with the White House, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and electric company senior executives, the Department of Energy (DOE) formally launched a new initiative to develop a more comprehensive and consistent approach to protecting the nation's electric grid. Called the Electric Sector Cybersecurity Risk Management Maturity Project, DOE is seeking to leverage private industry and public sector expertise to develop an adaptable and scaleable model for measuring current capabilities and analyzing gaps in cyber defenses. The model will be based on a cybersecurity risk management process guideline developed with public and industry input and finalized in October 2011.

In a statement accompanying the project launch, White House Cyber Security Coordinator Howard Schmidt commented, "This effort will be focused on performance-based strategies and concrete steps to measure progress of cyber security in the electric sector. It is important to understand the sector's strengths and remaining gaps across the grid to inform investment planning and research and development, and enhance our public-private partnership efforts."

A series of workshops with industry representatives is planned for the next several months to draft the maturity model. A pilot program to test the model's effectiveness and validate results is planned for late spring/early summer with about a dozen electric utilities and grid operators participating. Based on the results of the pilot program, a final risk management maturity model is expected to be made available to the entire electric sector late summer. Read more »

President Obama signed an Executive Order (EO) on October 7, 2011 that calls for structural reforms to the oversight of classified information. The EO supports, codifies, and accelerates ongoing work that includes bolstering detection capabilities, restricting removable media, and strengthening government-wide governance, coordination, and oversight. Utilities that participate in cybersecurity and physical security should review the EO and make themselves aware of the new information sharing structure. Read more »

In response to over 1100 tweets about the economy, jobs, education and other national issues, President Barack Obama gave supportive answers to questions about investments in clean energy and infrastructure. This virtual townhall used the popular microblogging and social networking platform Twitter as its main platform, so the President received and replied to questions, coming from all across the nation, in 140 charactar long 'tweets'. A large number of the questions selected by the moderators to put before the President inquired about the budget, and his proposed solutions to tackle the deficit. Responding to specific questions on alternative energy, President Obama said that he was looking "to promote it everywhere". He underscored his Administration’s commitment to clean energy by nothing that they had made “the largest investment in our history through the Recovery Act.” He also noted that they were “going to keep trying on things like smart grid & other infrastructure jobs opportunities where there hasn't been cooperation.” The recorded webcast and conversation from the 'Twitter Townhall' is archived at http://askobama.twitter.com/

Today, the White House held a meeting of government officials, public safety and industry stakeholders – including UTC – regarding the need to construct a nationwide public safety broadband network. In conjunction with the meeting, the White House released a report "detailing the Administration’s effort to develop and deploy a nationwide, interoperable public safety broadband network." The meeting also featured Vice President Biden, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley (D.), and New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. Also invited were public safety, state and local and industry representatives. Read more »

The White House is set to announce a number of public and private sector initiatives on Monday morning that are geared towards accelerating the modernization of the Nation’s electric infrastructure, bolstering electric-grid innovation, and advancing a clean energy economy. They include $250 million in Rural Utility Service (RUS) loans for smart-grid technology deployment, a private sector initiative to promote consumer-friendly tools for energy management and privacy, and the formation of a Renewable Energy Rapid Response Team which will be jointly led by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Energy.

A report titled "A Policy Framework for the 21st Century Grid" by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) will also be released at today's event. This report will address steps the administration plans to take to meet it's goals of boosting the development and deployment of smart grid technologies, creation of standards and interoperability to drive innovation, improved grid security and resilience, and consumer-focused energy information access and engagement.

The announcement will be made at a meeting today scheduled for 10am ET. A webcast of the meeting will be available on the White House website. For more information, see this press release.

President Barack Obama signed a memorandum titled ‘Unleashing the Wireless Broadband Revolution’ that collaborates with the Federal Communications Commission to making an additional 500MHz of government and commercial spectrum available mobile and fixed wireless broadband use in the next 10 years. This goal of getting 500MHz spectrum in the hands of wireless broadband providers over the next decade is a key part of the National Broadband Plan that the FCC presented to Congress earlier this year. Read more »