Federal-state cooperation is critical to protecting communities given the evolving challenges and threats facing our country, which range from extreme weather to domestic and international terrorism to a global pandemic. Due to the increased and evolving cybersecurity threats to the homeland over the last decade, enhancing the nation’s cybersecurity resilience has become a top priority for the Council of Governors.
Today, the bi-partisan Council continues to have growing concerns over the protection of our nation’s critical infrastructure. Protection of our Nation’s critical infrastructure is a shared responsibility of the owners and operators and federal, state, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) governments. In 2014, the Council worked with federal officials to develop a Joint Action Plan for State-Federal Unity of Effort on Cybersecurity, that describes the importance of promoting a national approach to preventing, protecting against, mitigating, responding to, and recovering from cyber incidents, including the development or refinement of a national cyber incident response framework. As a result of increasing cybersecurity threats, in 2022, the Council and Federal principals agreed that the Council of Governors Cybersecurity Working Group would recommend necessary changes to update and improve the Joint Action Plan. The following resources reflect these updates.