President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law earlier this week, bringing new funding to strengthen cyber defenses for transportation, public water systems, the energy grid, and state and local government agencies.
The infrastructure bill includes numerous provisions to bolster cybersecurity, including:
- $1 billion for a cybersecurity grant program for state, local, and tribal governments
- $100 million for a Cyber Response and Recovery Fund to support federal response to significant cyberattacks affecting a federal, state, local or tribal government
- Over $500 million for cybersecurity grant program focused on deploying advanced cybersecurity technologies for electric utility systems
- Over $100 million in new grant support to drinking water systems and water treatment works to address cyber vulnerabilities and increase resiliency to natural hazards
The program also extends eligibility for cybersecurity spending under certain existing federal highway programs to protect transportation infrastructure and includes significant new funding for broadband – recognizing that high-speed internet is critical infrastructure.
“The significant funding for cybersecurity in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will help companies across critical infrastructure sectors, as well as state and local governments, replace outdated ‘castle-and-moat’ cybersecurity models with modern zero trust architectures and secure cloud solutions,” says Jay Chaudhry, Chairman and CEO, Zscaler.
This infusion of federal funding for cybersecurity follows high-profile attacks on pipelines, water systems, and state and local governments. Earlier this year, President Biden also signed an executive order on cybersecurity that directs federal agencies to advance toward zero trust architecture and accelerate the adoption of secure cloud services.
As a company, we are focused on delivering secure cloud access, based on zero trust, for critical infrastructure providers and organizations across the Department of Defense, Federal Civilian agencies, the Intel community, and state and local government. We are proud of our ability to deliver the highest levels of independently tested and validated security to our government customers, including:
- The StateRAMP program has certified both ZIA and ZPA as “Ready” – the only cloud-based SaaS security solutions to achieve the designation to date
- The Department of Defense (DoD) recently granted Zscaler Private Access™ (ZPA™) a Provisional Authorization To Operate (P-ATO) at Impact Level 5 (IL5)
- ZPA achieved FedRAMP-High JAB Authorization
- Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) is JAB FedRAMP-Ready at the High Impact Level
Zero trust plays a vital role in securing our increasingly digital and connected world. Built on three tenets, the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange securely connects users and applications using business policies over the Internet:
- Use identity to connect users and applications to resources, not the enterprise network
- Make applications invisible to the internet
- Use a proxy architecture, not a passthrough firewall, for all application connections
We have seen tremendous digital transformation progress over the past two years. Progress will continue, but must continue securely and with support from legislation, funding, and continued innovation.
