Washington – The House Oversight Committee, Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation plans a hearing Thursday on ways to improve cybersecurity. The hearing comes days after the CloudStrike software error which caused one of the most significant Microsoft server outages in history. This hearing provides the Committee with the opportunity to also assess whether the current regulatory environment played a role in the failures and whether the government’s procurement decisions put federal actors and stakeholders at risk of similar failures in the future.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association has spoken at length on competition issues, including in government procurement, for decades.
The following can be attributed to CCIA Vice President for Federal Affairs Brian McMillan:
“The latest global IT outage highlights a concerning trend of vulnerabilities that can affect government servers, which can be greatly reduced by ensuring increased competition in the procurement space. Depending on few or single vendors is not the answer. We appreciate the House Oversight Committee looking at the broader regulatory environment to encourage improvements to cybersecurity in their own backyard.”