Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said the president’s fiscal 2024 budget request of $3.1 billion for CISA includes $493.1 million for mission support and $408.3 million for the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program.

Easterly, a 2023 Wash100 awardee, told House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee members during a budget hearing Tuesday the president’s request also includes $97.7 million for the implementation of the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act.

She noted that the proposed FY 2024 funding for CIRCIA “was really about putting the technical infrastructure in place to allow us to be able to receive this massive amount of new reporting, to analyze it, to correlate it, to enrich it and then to use it to respond,” according to a report by Nextgov.

She told lawmakers that her agency is still in the rulemaking phase with CIRCIA and has initiated a “consultative process” to gather feedback from private sector entities with regard to the law’s implementation.

Easterly stated that the administration’s budget proposal earmarks $48.2 million for CyberSentry, $67.4 million for the National Cybersecurity Protection System and approximately $425 million for the Cyber Analytics Data System.

“In FY 2024, portions of the NCPS will transition to the new CADS program with intrusion detection and intrusion prevention capabilities remaining under the legacy program,” she said in her prepared remarks.

Join the Potomac Officers Club’s Enhancing Cybersecurity for Critical Civilian Infrastructure Forum on March 30 to hear government and industry speakers talk about technological and policy-related aspects of improving cybersecurity for federal civilian agencies. Click here to register for the upcoming event.

QuSecure and partner Accenture have completed a multi-orbit data communications test using post-quantum cryptography as a cybersecurity algorithm.

The demonstration highlights the potential of quantum-resistant crypto agility systems to secure data transmitted through satellite communications, Accenture said Tuesday.

Quantum computers have been proven powerful enough to intercept data from multi-orbit satellites. To prevent such attacks, QuSecure deployed QuProtect, a crypto-agile quantum-resilient channel, to a satellite in low-Earth orbit, without actually installing the software on the communications system.

Data transmission, which was facilitated by Accenture, involved switching from LEO to geosynchronous orbit satellite and back to Earth as a redundancy measure.

“Accenture’s Space Innovation and Security teams are working together to ensure our partners and clients are prepared and secure as they embark on their space journeys,”  said Paul Thomas, space innovation lead, technology innovation at Accenture. He welcomed the collaboration with on QuSecure integrating crypto security into space data transmission.

Quantum computing is the center of a virtual event hosted by ExecutiveBiz on April 5. Join the 2023 Quantum Technologies Forum by clicking on the banner below.