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Among the number of bills recently passed out of the Texas House is a bill to create a new Texas Cyber Command, aimed at protecting the state from and responding to cyberattacks and other online threats.
The bill was authored by State Rep. Giovanni Capriglione (R-Southlake) and attaches the new command center to the University of Texas at San Antonio. The center will be led by a governor-appointed, Senate-confirmed chief.
So what’s the first thing this cyber command center should do if it actually comes online? Professor Stephen Huang with the University of Houston said, "Run regular cyberattack drills. This will help state agencies and critical infrastructure prepare their readiness."
Huang said this will also be a helpful response tool for any state agency or even private company that does wind up facing a cyberattack. He said, "They need to know what to do to minimize the damage to their system, they need to know who to contact, and this will be a good one for people in Texas."
He went on to say that the cyber command could also help monitor resources that are critical to our new data centers, like power and water. He also said that those data centers are going to become prime targets for cyberattacks, so this center is critically important.
According to Huang, "It’s a missing piece in this puzzle. We have people looking into the research side, we have people doing detections. But responding to cyberattacks? Very few people have that experience."