The Cyber Security Research and Development Act of 2009 has recently been passed in the House of Congress with an overwhelming vote of 422 to 5. This comes after the widespread rumors involving cyberattacks to be carried out by countries like China and Russia.
The bill like authorize the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in developing a cyber security education program that will help every individual, company, organizations, government offices and others in keeping their computers and files safe from such attacks. This includes scholarship grants for college students and research centers. The bill will also ask the NIST to strengthen, to boost and develop a better identity management system that will enable a better control of building access, computer networks, and data.
Although the federal government spend billions of dollars on cybersecurity every year, recent investigations showed that the US is not ready for cyber attacks.
The bill has received praise from a lot of security and tech companies around the US and the rest of the world. According to Symantec CTO Mark Bregman, "this bill will help improve the security of cyberspace by ensuring federal investments in cybersecurity are better focused, more effective, and that research into innovative, transformative security technologies is fully supported,".
Recent events such as Senate websites being defaced by hackers and hijackers and Google's report about the alleged attack of China to their users accounts have all prompted for this bill to be easily pass.
