Nearing his pending retirement Jan. 3, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, has spent the final years of his congressional career spearheading bipartisan efforts on technological legislation. As he prepares to depart public service, Portman told Nextgov he is optimistic about broadly unanimous legislative support behind emerging cybersecurity technologies.
“In my time in the Senate, I’ve found that cyber policymaking isn’t a partisan issue,” he said. “We have a good bipartisan caucus of cyber-focused legislators who I’m sure will carry on in the same fashion in my absence.”
Portman said that implementing robust cybersecurity protocols at federal agencies will require a pivot from compliance-based security practices to more risk-based practices.
“Under current law, federal cybersecurity is a check-the-box approach rather than risk-based,” he said in an email interview. “Agencies also need to make significant steps toward implementing zero trust architecture, which we haven’t seen enough progress on. Network defenders should assume that the adversary will get in the network and shift from perimeter security to endpoint security and limit the adversary’s ability to increase access through network segmentation and strong multi-factor authentication.”
He added that other steps to construct more secure federal network systems and cyber hygiene practices include updating the Federal Information Security Modernization Act and improving visibility into both government enterprise networks and...
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