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The United States is facing a continued and growing cyber threat, which has the potential to jeopardize our national security, public safety and economic competitiveness. This threat makes securing cyberspace one of the most important missions facing the homeland security community today.
The Department of Homeland Security’s 2010 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) established the safeguarding and securing of cyberspace as a critical mission of DHS, with the goals to create a safe, secure and resilient cyber environment and promote cybersecurity knowledge and innovation. The Blueprint for a Secure Cyber Future proposes a path forward to achieve these goals.
The Blueprint calls for a coordinated effort across the homeland security community to protect our nation’s critical information infrastructure and build a safer and more secure cyber ecosystem. Specific actions range from hardening critical networks and prosecuting cybercrime to raising public awareness and training a national cybersecurity workforce.
Cyberspace forms the backbone of our modern economy and society. The Internet is an engine of immense wealth creation and a force for openness, transparency, innovation, and freedom. Information and communication technologies allow generators to turn, businesses to operate, and families and friends to communicate. Cyberspace is vital to our way of life, and we must work to make this domain more secure—the safety of our critical infrastructure, the strength of our national security, our economic vitality and public safety depend upon it.
The Blueprint outlines an integrated and holistic approach to protecting our nation’s cyberspace. It is a map – a guide – to enable the homeland security community to leverage existing capabilities and promote technological advances that enable government, the private sector and the public to be safer online.
The document complements the President’s International Strategy for Cyberspace, the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace and the recently released Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace. Together, these documents provide a whole of government approach to the many opportunities and challenges the nation faces in cyberspace.
Cybersecurity is a shared responsibility, and each of us has a role to play. DHS will work with federal, state, local and private sector partners across the homeland security community to achieve the goals outlined in the Blueprint. Implementing the Blueprint will be an inclusive, participatory effort to make cyberspace a safe, secure and resilient place where the American way of life can thrive.