Government Computer News reports that the U.S. financial services industry will team up with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology on cybersecurity research and development, with the goal of speeding commercialization of cybersecurity research in a critical sector.  The move could ease DNSSEC deployment with the creation of new testbeds and other efforts.

A White House blog post by Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer, and Howard A. Schmidt, cybersecurity coordinator and special assistant to the President, notes that Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council (FSSCC)’s ” participants include banks, credit unions, insurance companies, payment services, trading firms, and others…[It] supports research and development initiatives to protect the physical and electronic infrastructure of the banking and finance sector and to protect its customers by enhancing the sector’s resilience and integrity.”

Both NIST and the DHS Science & Technology Directorate are partners in the DNSSEC Deployment Coordination Initiative, and GCN notes that “NIST also has worked with DHS in establishing testbeds for advanced networking tools and security technologies such as the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) and Border Gateway Protocol Security. This early work could speed the establishment of a test environment for financial services, Romine said. “A lot of the groundwork has been laid.” Charles Romine is the acting associate director for laboratory programs at NIST.

Read the full memorandum of understanding here.