US Department of Commerce

The US Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) introduced CyberSeek, an interactive online tool designed to make it easier for cybersecurity job seekers to find openings and for employers to identify the skilled workers they need. CyberSeek was announced at the 2016 NICE Conference in Kansas City (MO), by Rodney Petersen, director of the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE), which funded development of the tool.

The NIST-led NICE focuses on cybersecurity education, training and workforce development. The CyberSeek tool fills in knowledge gaps so policy makers, employers, security professionals and others will have greater visibility into the demand for cybersecurity professionals around the country. It will allow them to see the skills and types of workers that employers are looking for, as well as the true supply of professionals to fill those positions.

US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker delivered a keynote address to executives, technology industry leaders, and high-ranking government and national security officials at the US Chamber of Commerce’s fifth-annual Cybersecurity Summit in Washington, DC. During her remarks, Sec Pritzker argued for fundamentally changing the value proposition for businesses to engage with federal agencies on cyberthreats, pointing to the risk of punitive action as a deterrent for the dynamic, continuous collaboration between industry and government necessary to secure the digital economy. Sec Pritzker called for federal agencies and businesses to fully embrace a common language for cyberrisk management, highlighted the need for new legal structures to support greater public-private sector cooperation, and urged industry and government to work together to design and deploy technical solutions for emerging threats in cyberspace.

Sec Pritzker is floating the idea of giving businesses "reverse Miranda" rights so that they can discuss cyberattacks with officials without risking any punishment. Sec Pritzker said that with regulations and Federal Trade Commission actions there are often civil, legal and regulatory risks that discourage businesses from acknowledging cyberattacks. She said that led to a relationship between regulators and businesses that is “inherently adversarial, not collaborative."

[Commentary] Fun fact: The world’s premier weather watcher, storm chaser and climate monitor – aka, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – gathers enough data every single day to fill the Library of Congress twice. The public also owns countless other terabytes of data that the Department of Commerce produces every day: Economic data, from jobs to paychecks to the products and services we make, provide and sell. Trade data – imports and exports – drilled down to the commodity and the community. Patent and trademark data about inventions and brands, from the first patent in 1790 for Samuel Hopkins’ crop fertilizer ingredient, signed by President Washington, to Patent 9371560 last month for, “methods for the automated reconstruction of a genotype of a gene, fragment, or genomic region using exhaustive enumeration.” The list of invaluable data that Commerce produces goes on and on.

As Secretary Pritzker said, Commerce is “America’s Data Agency.” “No other department,” she said, “can rival the reach, depth, and breadth of our data programs.” I’ve reiterated in my blogs how making the vast trove of Commerce data more accessible, useful and usable to the nation is one of the five pillars of Secretary Pritzker’s “Open for Business” strategy. And now ESA is on point to help advance the data pillar. But another job we all share is to advance one of the other five pillars, operational excellence.