In support of the new Cybersecurity Framework released by the Obama administration earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security is seeking information from industry on its ability to provide scalable and affordable cyber security solutions to small and medium-sized businesses that typically have limited resources.
“DHS seeks to understand the landscape of capabilities available to SMBs (small and medium businesses) and ways to encourage economies of scale so SMBs can benefit from the rapid advances in cyber security and technology,” the department says in a Feb. 20 announcement on FedBizOpps.gov. “At the same time, DHS hopes to drive the markets to innovate creatively toward solutions that enable provision of high levels of cyber security affordably to all entities with attractive business returns that keep the markets active.”
The types of solutions that DHS is referring to are those that would be outsourced to service and technology providers, such as managed security services, network security monitoring, continuous diagnostics and mitigation, web application monitoring, email filtering and others.
Among other things that it is hoping to learn, DHS wants to know whether there is a viable marketplace for vendors capable of providing these solutions at affordable prices to SMBs in support of the Cybersecurity Framework and whether adoption of the framework by SMBs would make them a more attractive customer. DHS also wants to know how the “government can help reinforce the value of affordable cyber security solutions to SMBs.”
The framework, which was created through a public-private partnership, offers standards, best practices and guidelines that owners and operators of critical infrastructure can voluntarily adopt to improve their cyber security postures.