Cybersecurity tops priorities for DHS' research and development arm

The Homeland Security Department's science and technology office plans to triple spending on cybersecurity research and development, the acting undersecretary told Congress on Tuesday, with most of the additional funds in President Obama's fiscal 2010 budget request focusing on new ways to protect the nation's critical infrastructure, including transportation and the electric grid.

The Directorate for Science and Technology, which is the primary research and development arm of DHS, requested $968 million for fiscal 2010, a 3.8 percent increase over the previous year's enacted budget.

Of the $35 million in additional funds requested, DHS would earmark $5.4 million for cybersecurity, Brad Buswell, the directorate's acting undersecretary, told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism. Buswell said cybersecurity would gain a 300 percent funding increase, compared with fiscal 2009, for the development of "leap-ahead technologies" that secure the nation's computer networks and information infrastructure -- including energy, transportation, telecommunications, and banking and finance.

Pointing to the DHS National Protection and Programs Directorate as the office's primary customer for cybersecurity technologies, Buswell emphasized the need for coordination with the private sector to ensure the department's research and development doesn't overlap with work in industry.

"The work we're doing [in cybersecurity] is work that the private sector is not doing for a number of reasons," Buswell said. "But we're very mindful of the fact that we don't deploy the technology -- we develop the technology. Much of this is deployed by private sector, so we need to keep them closely involved in all development to make sure we're not duplicating efforts."

DHS requested an additional $11 million to fund research and development "that could lead to significant technology breakthroughs that enhance DHS operations, including technologies for protecting levees, mass transit tunnels, and the electric grid in Manhattan," Buswell said. Other additional funding would include $24.7 million for technologies that can detect and minimize the impact of non-nuclear explosives used in terrorist attacks against mass transit, civil aviation and critical infrastructure; $14.7 million to better detect improvised explosive devices typically used in mass transit systems; and $5 million for advanced detection, identification, apprehension and enforcement capabilities along U.S. borders.