With data breaches a pretty regular affair and your personal information constantly under threat of getting exposed, the battle against cybersecurity gets tougher all the time. The cable industry believes it can help, and on Tuesday laid out a set of policies to allow everyone from network engineers to cybersecurity professionals to take that fight to the network level.
CableLabs, the non-profit R&D company tasked with coming up with cable innovations, and the NCTA – The Internet & Television Association trade group, unveiled its “Cybersecurity Framework Profile for Internet Routing” document at an event covered by LightReading. Companies including Comcast, Charter Communications, the parent of Spectrum, Cox Communications, Rogers Communications, and Liberty Global were among the companies involved in the working group that developed the guide.
By identifying threats within the network as they’re getting routed around the country or the world, it’s heading off potential bigger problems when they get to your computer or phone screen. The guide is meant to get not only the cable industry, but others working in cybersecurity all on the same page. By having a consistent set of rules, companies that normally wouldn’t work together can coordinate on the cybersecurity battle.
The security framework also aligns with the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework. That will allow other big businesses, cloud service providers, internet service providers to spot and fight threats within the network. The idea is with everyone aligned, the process to find and combat these threats will be far more efficient, CableLabs explained in its blog post.
This guide is just the first step toward getting these companies working together. Ultimately, it will be up to the industry to make use of the framework to better protect the internet.