The ISA’s McCurdy award is named for the ISA founder, Dave McCurdy, who served as chair of the House Intelligence Committee during the 1990s.
ISA does not make the award on an annual basis, preferring to acknowledge only truly noteworthy instances of policy leadership on cybersecurity.
McCurdy award winners include Senators Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Dianne Feintsein (D-Calif.) for their work on getting the Cyber Security Act of 2015 passed into law. The first awardee was Melissa Hathaway, who was honored for her work on President Obama’s Cyber Space Policy Review.
In addition, we’ve honored Representative Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) for his work on the House Republican Cybersecurity Task Force in 2010; White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel for his work on President Barack Obama’s 2013 executive order on cybersecurity; and, Reps. Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger, who in 2014 jointly crafted the House version of the Information sharing legislation that Burr and Feinstein got through the Senate in 2015.
Each of these outstanding leaders have had the vision to not only see the seriousness of the cyber threat, but had the insight to understand that this 21st century problem can’t be addressed with warmed over 20th century regulatory solutions. They each crafted innovative proposals that utilized market forces to drive improved cybersecurity behavior and were able to see these creative efforts through in spite of a historically difficult legislative environment.
