This morning, at NCTA’s offices, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R, MI-8) and C. A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D, MD-2), the Ranking Member of the Intelligence Committee, announced that they were introducing cybersecurity legislation, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011. The bill gives the federal government new authority to share classified cyber threat information with approved American companies.

In a statement, NCTA President & CEO Michael Powell applauded the bill, saying that it would “ensure better information sharing between all stakeholders involved in protecting our nation’s critical cyber infrastructure.”

We appreciate that this legislation avoids a prescriptive regulatory regime that does not fit the constantly evolving cyber threat environment and it appropriately allows individual companies to determine how they can best participate.

You can watch a video of the event.

Here is a sampling of the news coverage.

• New cybersecurity bill would foster sharing of online data between government, private sector [WashingtonPost.com's Checkpoint Washington blog]
• Cyber security bill promotes sharing of threat data [CNN's Security Clearance blog]
• Bipartisan Cybersecurity Bill Aims to Spur Industry-Government Sharing [National Journal]
• Companies Urged to Share Cyber Threats With U.S. in House Bill [Bloomberg Businessweek]
• Bill would allow US intelligence to share cyber-threat info [Network World]
• Cable, Telco Backed Cybersecurity Bill Introduced; Allows the government to share certain cyber threat intelligence with private entities, like ISPs [Broadcasting & Cable]