Senator wants cybersecurity center at NIST
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) is pushing to establish a new cybersecurity center of excellence at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) wants to establish a new national cybersecurity center of excellence at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Mikulski detailed her plans for the center at a cybersecurity conference this week in Washington hosted by the Commerce Department, NIST’s parent agency. She described NIST as one of the primary gateways for industry for working with government on cybersecurity.
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“I believe its role in this is important exactly because it’s not a security agency,” Mikulski said. “When the private sector goes there, they don’t get a spook; they get a scientist or a technologist. And your customers won’t be spooked by you going to NIST.”
Mikulski wants $10 million to fund a new center of excellence at NIST. The funding is part of an appropriations bill to fund Commerce for fiscal 2011 that the Senate Appropriations Committee approved July 22. Mikulski chairs that committee's Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee.