Washington – Business Roundtable endorsed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (H.R. 3523), as introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), and praised the Intelligence Committee for its near unanimous approval of the important legislation.

“Protecting our cyber infrastructure is of vital importance to America’s economic and national security,” said Ajay Banga, President and CEO, MasterCard Incorporated, and Chairman, Business Roundtable Information and Technology Committee.  “This legislation is an important first step towards updating and retooling our nation’s cybersecurity capabilities to create a public-private foundation necessary to address dynamic cybersecurity threats.  We are pleased that the House of Representatives acted in a swift, bipartisan manner to address this growing national problem.”

In a letter to Chairman Rogers, BRT President John Engler praised the legislation as an essential component to a more robust and responsive cybersecurity infrastructure.

“Increasingly, well-funded cyber adversaries are targeting our government as well as the U.S. business community, threatening our national and economic security,” Engler stated.  “The legislation (H.R. 3523) authorizes the Director of National Intelligence to implement effective, collaborative real-time information sharing capabilities between the public and private sectors.  Business Roundtable is encouraged that this approach could lead to the integration of the full resources of the U.S. government, including defense, intelligence, homeland security, diplomatic, economic and trade assets.”

In BRT’s recent policy paper, Mission Critical: A Public-Private Strategy for Effective Cybersecurity, the CEOs of America’s leading companies presented a strategy to protect U.S. economic and national security from growing global cybersecurity threats through the development of a more modern, flexible and collaborative approach to protecting America’s strategic information assets.