The Trump administration needs help from industry to reduce the cybersecurity regulatory burden and to back important cyber legislation on Capitol Hill, among other areas, National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross said Tuesday.
“You know your regulatory scheme better than I do: Where there’s friction, where there’s frustration with information sharing, what sort of information is shared, the process through which it’s shared,” he said. “It is helpful for us to hear that and have that feedback so that we can address it, engage it and try to make it better.”
The Trump administration is interested in being a partner with industry rather than a “scold,” Cairncross said at an Information Technology Industry Council event. The Biden administration sought to impose more cybersecurity rules on the private sector than prior administrations.
Cairncross also called on industry to help pass the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, which has expired and dealt with short-term extensions in recent months as Congress stalls on what to do with a law that provides legal protections to companies that share cyber threat data with the government and each other.
The Trump administration would like to see the law extended as-is for 10 years.
“What we need from industry is an echo chamber up on the Hill to help make that happen,” he said. “I can go tell people how important this is, or the White House can weigh in, and we have done that. But when the people who are actually affected by this start to weigh in with members, that has an even greater impact.”
Overall, Cairncross wants industry to “show up and engage,” he said, as the administration has done with its forthcoming cybersecurity strategy, something he said would be rolled out “sooner rather than later.”
“Reach out to us,” he urged. “We will certainly be reaching out how we have gone about this strategic piece of this. Just from the outset, we have had a heavy industry engagement side of this and looked for feedback and thoughts. It’s been extremely helpful, and hopefully it has been successful in sending the message that we want to, which is, we are here to do everything we can to partner with industry.”