Expert: Cybersecurity incentives, not mandates, needed

The U.S. Congress should look to provide incentives for private businesses to adopt stronger cybersecurity practices instead of creating new mandates, one information security expert told a congressional subcommittee Friday.

Eighty percent to 90 percent of cybersecurity problems can be fixed if businesses follow established best practices, and the government can help by offering incentives such as small-business loans, insurance and awards programs, said Larry Clinton, president and CEO of the Internet Security Alliance, a security advocacy group.

In recent weeks some lawmakers and cybersecurity experts have called for new cybersecurity regulations, but regulations would be static in a quickly changing field and could put U.S. industry at a competitive disadvantage, Clinton said. In addition, U.S. regulations would reach only to the nation's borders, he added.

"This is an international problem," Clinton said during a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. "We need a better system -- a 21st-century system."

Under the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush, the government took a largely hands-off approach and waited for private market incentives that never materialized, Clinton said. Instead, government must work with private industry to provide incentives for cybersecurity, including liability protections and procurement awards, he said.

"What we're trying to do here is change the economics of cybersecurity by constructing a market that makes private organizations want to continually invest in cybersecurity in their own economic self-interest," Clinton said. "Only then can we create the sort of sustainable and evolving system of cybersecurity we need."

Clinton and Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, didn't mention it by name, but both seemed to take aim at cybersecurity legislation introduced April 1 by Senators Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, and Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican.

The Cybersecurity Act would, among other things, establish enforceable cybersecurity standards for private businesses and would allow the U.S. president to declare a cybersecurity emergency and shut down both public and some private networks that are compromised.

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