All of us here at PEAKE would like to congratulate the House of Representatives for passing the National Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2013. According to a release by the Homeland Security Committee, headed up by Chairman Michael McCaul, the NCCIP Act “will strengthen our nation’s efforts to protect the homeland from a cyber-attack on our critical infrastructure…” In the same document, FBI Director, James Comey testified before congress that resources dedicated to the prevention of virtual attacks would match or exceed the resources dedicated to prevention of physical attacks.[1] Our nation is not absolved of our responsibility to protect the physical power & utilities grid, however. As mentioned in a previous post about the sniper attack on Pacific Gas & Electric’s Metcalf substation last year, the threat of domestic terrorism on critical infrastructure remains as real as the growing virtual attacks.The energy sector is unwieldy and difficult to protect. Serving 300 million people and reaching over 200,000 miles of or power lines, outputting 1 million megawatts of power that yields in excess of 1 trillion dollars.[2] PEAKE has in depth experience working closely with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), providing comprehensive communication and command and control solutions. The NCCIP Act only strengthens this positive working relationship and codifies many of the industry best practices already established by incident response providers such as PEAKE.The provisions of the NCCIP Act directly addresses areas where PEAKE excels:

· It establishes an equal partnership between private industry and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS must recognize industry leaders, such as PEAKE, in the realm of critical infrastructure protection and incident response.

· The National Cyber security and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), a federal and civilian organization that facilitates real-time threat information sharing across critical infrastructure sectors.· Portions of the National Infrastructure Protection Plan are codified. The NIPP is a public-private partnership, which has been supported by PEAKE for several years.

 [1] http://homeland.house.gov/sites/homeland.house.gov/files/documents/12113...

[2] “Electric Grid Vulnerability: Industry Responses Reveal Security Gaps.” A report by the Staffs of Congressmen Edward J. Markey and Henry Waxman