Office of Enterprise Technology Services

HONOLULU – Administrator Frank Pace of the Hawaiʻi Office of Homeland Security, released the following statement regarding recent cybersecurity events and President Biden’s Executive Order to improve our nation’s cybersecurity:

“As stated yesterday by Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security: ‘Recent cybersecurity incidents impacting SolarWinds, Microsoft, and Colonial Pipeline are a stark reminder that malicious cyber activity can significantly disrupt Americans’ daily lives and threaten our national security.’ While the State of Hawaiʻi has escaped the serious harm caused by these most recent, as well as previous incidents – we are not immune.”

“Addressing these risks to our way of life is a collaborative effort at the state level between the public and private sectors, in support of the Executive Order issued by the Biden Administration that will empower the expansion of our active and continuing public-private information-sharing. We also look forward to the opportunity to connect our ongoing cyber incident and disruption response planning efforts with the Order’s call for developing a Federal standard playbook for incident response.”

“The Hawaiʻi Office of Homeland Security leads the State’s current and ongoing efforts to prevent, respond to, and mitigate any such incident in cooperation and collaboration with their public and private partners, to include the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and a multitude of organizations across the Hawaiʻi private sector.”

“The Office of Homeland Security has collaborated with the Office of Enterprise Technology Services to establish the State’s first Cyber Incident Response Plan and has also recently launched a state-wide planning effort to develop a response plan for incidents beyond our state government information technology enterprise.”