In an effort to support
and enhance the security and readiness of the states
to deal with potential terrorist threats Rock Regan,
CIO for Connecticut and President of the National Association
of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), today
signed an agreement with the National Infrastructure
Protection Center (NIPC) Director, Ronald L. Dick. This
partnership between the NASCIO and the NIPC will allow
vital security-related information to move more effectively
between the multi-agency NIPC, based at FBI headquarters
in Washington, DC, and the states through their chief
information officers (CIOs).
Information dissemination
will be coordinated by NASCIO via an Interstate Information
Sharing and Analysis Center (Interstate ISAC) function
at its headquarters in Lexington, Kentucky. This ISAC
will support critical state infrastructure security
through the offices of participating state CIOs. Support
of the continuity of critical state government infrastructures
is a key component of the Presidential Decision Directive-63
signed in May 1998. NASCIO will ensure that the state's
receive the most current counter-terrorist threat alerts,
warnings and analysis. This will include classified
threat intelligence provided by the NIPC to NASCIO (once
proper clearances are in place), which will then assist
the NIPC in preparing warnings of threats to state physical
and cyber infrastructures.
In turn, the state's CIOs
and CISOs will be encouraged to work through the NIPC
to voluntarily pass incident information to national-level
agencies responsible for looking for patterns that may
indicate an organized attack is in preparation or underway.
"While everyone is
doing their utmost to prevent terrorist attacks, today's
threat environment reflects that potential targets are
not limited to federal government sites. That is why
information sharing between the national and the state
levels is vital in the war against terrorism,"
said Ron Dick, Director of the NIPC. Mr. Dick added,
"We must be able to give the states the most comprehensive
and timely threat assessments and warnings we possibly
can, so they can take actions to protect their critical
infrastructures, and minimize the potential loss of
life and property. Advance knowledge of the target area
and the type of attack (bomb, chemical, radiological,
biological and/or cyber) can make a vital difference
in their readiness to prevent, and mitigate the consequences
of an attack. The intelligence, law enforcement and
other agencies that make up the NIPC are committed to
giving the states that vital edge."
Reading a prepared statement
from Regan, Matthew R. DeZee, CIO for South Carolina
and leader of NASCIO's security program, added that
"the Memorandum of Understanding we signed today
recognizes the necessity for a robust and timely exchange
of essential information about cyber and physical threats
to the state's critical infrastructures. State CIOs,
as the custodians of their states' critical information
assets and coordinators of statewide information sharing,
have been working closely with homeland security teams,
and this agreement will provide a very valuable resource
to a wide range of state critical infrastructure protection
efforts. Over time NASCIO will work with the states
and federal partners, such as NIPC, to develop this
Interstate ISAC function into a national model for two-way
trusted exchange of information in order to analyze
and disseminate actionable intelligence on threats,
attacks, vulnerabilities, anomalies, and security best
practices involving the continuity of state governments."
"Supporting the Interstate
ISAC is one more step in our efforts to integrate State
and local resources into an efficient and effective
national effort to fortify our homeland defenses,"
Dick added. "The Interstate ISAC and their representative
state's communications networks, leverages the existing
dissemination networks within the states, and avoids
wasting limited resources duplicating these systems
to pass threat information. These state representatives
in turn are in an excellent position to give us expert
interpretation on raw sensitive threat intelligence,
and help us turn it into useful information that the
states can directly act on."
NASCIO will be signing
participation agreements with states interested in receiving
the alerts. As part of the agreement, states will agree
to handle and disseminate the NIPC alerts appropriately
within their enterprises. NASCIO will support its Interstate
ISAC function utilizing staff and volunteer support.
About NASCIO
NASCIO (http://www.nascio.org)
is the National Association of State Chief Information
Officers and represents the state chief information
officers from the 50 states, six U.S. territories and
the District of Columbia. Other IT officials participate
as associate members and private sector representatives
may become corporate members. The mission of the association
is to shape national IT policy through collaborative
partnerships, information sharing and knowledge transfer
across jurisdictional and functional boundaries.
