Access Control
& Security Systems

A cyber-security agency should be created in the proposed Department of Homeland Security to ensure that significant attention and resources are focused on the urgent need to protect the nation's public and private information infrastructures, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) states in a recent letter to Congress.

The Administration's legislation would be greatly enhanced with the inclusion of several bills now pending in Congress, as well as a few changes in the structure, including the creation of a separate and distinct cyber-security agency, BSA said in the letter.

"Strengthening cyber-security requires analytical and technological capabilities that are related to, but also distinct from, traditional intelligence gathering and physical security functions," says BSA president and CEO Robert Holleyman. "Federal efforts to strengthen cyber-security will continue to require the strong participation of private industry, which owns 90 percent of the critical infrastructures in question and which developed the very technologies that we are seeking to protect."

BSA also proposed legislation to facilitate information sharing between the private and public sector, and a bill to set minimum federal security guidelines be included in the Homeland Security Act.

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