Senate committee demands DHS explain alleged lack of support for cybersecurity office

Source: ComputerWorld

Committee also seeks explanation on how $6 million set aside for NCSC was spent

March 25, 2009 (Computerworld) The Senate Homeland Security Committee's senior-most Republican is asking DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to explain why the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), set up within the department last year, has seemingly been marginalized by the agency.

In a March 23 letter addressed to Napolitano, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) also demanded a detailed explanation from the DHS on how the $6 million that had been set aside for the NCSC last year had been spent. Collins said the letter was prompted by concern over several assertions made by former director Rod Beckstrom when he quit his job earlier this month.

In his resignation letter, Beckstrom said that the NCSC had not received appropriate support from within the DHS and had received just five weeks' worth of funding over all of last year. He also said that the NCSC had faced various roadblocks that appeared to have been intentionally engineered from within the DHS and the White House Office of Management and Budget. Beckstrom also pointed to what he said were growing attempts by the National Security Agency (NSA) to wrest control of the NCSC as a reason for his resignation.

Pointing to the comments, Sen. Collins said the Senate Committee needed to understand more fully "how and why the NCSC was allegedly marginalized," despite the prominent role in cybersecurity that had been envisaged for it when the office was first created. Collins pointed to a letter written by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff last June describing the NCSC as the "single location for all-source situation awareness about cybersecurity" across government.



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Susan Collins (republican) should have been demanding this information last year - the new DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano just recently was appointed to that office.

Also the underfunding that Beckstrom referred to happened while the republicans were in charge.

They need to haul in former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and ask him what happened.