The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Wednesday launched its series of stakeholder workshops to assist the agency in the development of a cybersecurity framework for the private sector. The voluntary framework, required by the Executive Order President Obama issued in February, is expected to provide guidelines to industry with critical infrastructure on best practices to protect their assets from cyber-attacks.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: Technology innovators can play an important role in “framing the framework” on how to address the rising number of cybersecurity intrusions within the nation’s businesses and networks. The building of the framework is a key opportunity to influence the final guidelines that the private sector, from utilities to banks, will be encouraged to use.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE: — NIST issued a Request for Information (RFI) and comments from stakeholders that are due April 8. Anyone can comment. NIST will publish those comments and an analysis of those comments in the coming weeks.http://www.nist.gov/itl/cyberframework.cfm — NIST will hold a series of private sector engagement workshops throughout the year to meet a year-end deadline for a preliminary version of these voluntary baseline standards. The next workshop will be held in late May at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, PA. More details to come.

Questions?  Contact GTSC Strategic Strategic Advisor Chani Wiggins at [email protected]