DHS expands Enhanced Cybersecurity Services program

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to expand on its Enhanced Cybersecurity Services (ECS) program. The ECS program was launched in 2011, and involves cybersecurity organizations from across the federal government. The ECS, which was expanded in 2013, is a voluntary information sharing program that shares sensitive and classified cyber threat indicators from across government with Commercial Service Providers who use this information to protect their customers from cyber threats.

Previous commercial providers include telecoms AT&T, CenturyLink, and Verizon. Lockheed Martin was recently added to the list of commercial providers, and it is hoped that including Lockheed Martin, a non-telecom, “might put ECS over the hump so it finally makes sense to people,” said Howard Schmidt, former White House cyber czar under presidents Bush and Obama, and the new chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Cybersecurity Leadership Council.

In an interview with Federal Times, Schmidt went on to explain that “Typically, people in the private sector have had to wait till information about threats comes out in the news, and by then it’s too late.” Schmidt went on to say that the type of information sharing provided by ECS “is really a way of doing business we should have been doing since 2001.”

DHS plans on continuing to grow the ECS program.

For more information on the cybersecurity program, please follow the links below.
Enhanced Cybersecurity Services, Department of Homeland Security
DHS Continues to Expand Enhanced Cybersecurity Services Program, Department of Homeland Security
Can Lockheed spur interest in DHS’s cyber services program?, Federal Times