Cybersecurity Policy Report, Telecom Security Council Prepares Recommendations for FCC, (Sep 24, 2026)

By Jeff Williams

The working groups for the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) have been “hard at work” for the past few months "laying the foundation” for the reports and recommendations CSRIC will release at the end of its charter, Sean Michael Newell, CSRIC’s co-chair and chief of the National Security Cyber Section in the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said yesterday during a CSRIC meeting that included presentations from co-chairs of each working group.

Akhil Gokul, CSRIC co-chair and head-technology for the Americas at Ericsson, said the working groups had the “connected, common objective” to ensure that communications networks “remain secure, reliable, resilient, and interoperable when people and institutions demand the most of it.”

During one of the presentations, Chris Anderson, co-chair of the working group on the national security implications of the dark fiber market and principal adviser-national security and emergency preparedness at Lumen, noted that dark fiber networks used in “much or most of the United States” could “allow for the creation of clandestine voice or data networks that exist without the same degree of visibility, oversight, ability to do things like lawful intercept” that a “normal telco-provided service would allow.”

The working group is examining how to provide additional transparency in the dark fiber market, including by evaluating know-your-customer and know-your-business solutions, as well as investigating the risks posed to national security and resilience by the dark fiber market, he said.

The working group on ensuring submarine cable security and resiliency is assessing the “material risks” to the submarine cable connectivity and evaluating “existing prevention, protection, response, repair, and recovery arrangements,” with the “intention of identifying gaps and recommending measures that the government and industry can take in order to be able to protect cables against general threats, but also with specific reference to foreign adversaries,” working group co-chair Grace Koh, vice president-government affairs at Ciena Corp., said during a presentation.

The working group on malicious SIM (subscriber identity module) farm mitigation is addressing the risks that SIM farms "create when it comes to not only things like robocalls, but also call-messaging, call-forwarding, account threats, as well as large-scale fraud, scams, spam campaigns, and phishing attacks that ... are present globally, not only in the United States,” John Marinho, working group co-chair and VP-regulatory affairs at CTIA, said during the meeting.

Scott Poretsky, co-chair of the working group on enhancing communications network security and director–security, Americas, strategy, and technology at Ericsson, said during a presentation that the working group was focused on addressing the “significant threats to our nation’s telecommunications networks” from ransomware, as well as advanced persistent threats from nation-state actors or nation-state sponsored entities.

News: FederalLegislation DataSecurity