Disregard CISA Chicken Littles: CISA Boosts U.S. Cyber Defense While Protecting Privacy

Yes: the Cyber Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA) was slipped into the must-pass Omnibus Spending Bill last week by House negotiators and became law on Friday. No: despite protestations from some quarters, the sky has not fallen on our personal privacy.

Although critics decry CISA for providing the National Security Agency (NSA) with a direct pipeline to all of our personal data, the actual language of the statute does not support this criticism. Rather, when you examine what the statute actually says, you see a measured effort to promote national cybersecurity by encouraging better sharing of cyber threat information among our government and private industry, while addressing privacy concerns.