What does the FCC have to do with cyber security?
What does the FCC have to do with cyber security?
Publish Date: 2026-05-08 15:32:00
Source Domain: federalnewsnetwork.com
Terry Gerton I want to start by drawing the connection dots between the Federal Communications Commission and cyber security. How would you describe the FCC’s role here?
Zenji Nakazawa Yeah, fantastic question. I get that a lot. So the FCC, which was created back by statute in 1934, really, cybersecurity, if you look at it, is baked into our DNA. Right up front, as far as one of our founding statutory strictures is that we work for the protection of public safety and national security over communications wire and wireless technologies. So from there, that has been sort of like front and center, the heart of our work here, especially in the public safety.
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Terry Gerton Are there cyber threats that you are most concerned about these days?
Zenji Nakazawa Well, yes, any cyber threat is not a good threat. So it’s hard to quantify them. But yes, I think really, why are we doing this right now? And it’s not something that we’ve just picked up. This has been something that we have been tracking for years. But what is different about this environment is that the threat environment has matured. We have advanced persistent threats from nation-state actors. We have an increase in ransomware attacks. These are not hypothetical attacks or events. These have real operational impacts that have downstream effects, not only to individual citizens, but to how our public safety mechanisms work, whether it’s the emergency alert system or wireless emergency alerts that we get on our phones, et cetera. So these workshops are really —
Terry Gerton We will come back to the workshops, but I want to keep kind of just exploring the environment for a minute because the communications ecosystem is really varied. You have large national carriers, small providers, local businesses, and you have equipment providers. And they all have very different resources. So when you think about this ecosystem, where do you see the biggest opportunity for the FCC to actually help the…
