FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

It is a great pleasure to be here today, to help launch the next generation Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, better known to some of you as the FSISAC.

The United States has a $12 trillion economy and about $4 trillion in funds flow daily through the financial system.

In a very real sense, the financial system is the life blood of our economy. Any significant disruption in this flow of funds would severely affect our economic growth and our standard of living. Accordingly, the Department of the Treasury wholeheartedly supports the mission of FSISAC, which will enhance the resiliency of the thousands of financial institutions that comprise the financial sector.

FSISAC was created in 1999 in response to a Presidential Directive. At that time, the United States recognized the growing threats to our infrastructure, particularly from an increasing onslaught of computer viruses, worms, and hackers. FSISAC did a commendable job of responding to those threats as we understood them at the time. I wish to acknowledge and thank Rhonda MacLean, who is with us today, for her role in establishing the original FSISAC, as well as her continued leadership.

Since 1999, of course, much has changed. The terrorist attacks of September 11th, made clear that we faced new physical threats to our infrastructure. At the same time, the speed and maliciousness of cyber threats has increased exponentially.

The next generation FSISAC is designed to meet these new threats. It will service the entire financial services sector. It will integrate physical and cyber threat information. It will provide a state-of-the-art technology platform for the confidential exchange of information as the financial sector works together to respond to emerging physical and cyber threats. This will be a key component of the extraordinary resiliency of the financial system of the United States.

President Bush has designated the Department of the Treasury as the lead agency to coordinate the protection of our critical financial infrastructure. After receiving this charge, the Department of the Treasury made the development of a next-generation FSISAC a top priority. We worked with FSISAC, our sister financial regulators in the “Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee”, and private sector members of the “Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council”, to develop a business plan for the next generation. This business plan was based on extensive market research documenting that a new, improved FSISAC could serve the entire sector and support itself through private sector funding.

At the same time, however, our research convinced us that the FSISAC must make significant investments to upgrade its technological infrastructure if it is to serve the entire sector and deliver a product that would elicit ongoing, private sector support. The Department of the Treasury stands ready to acquire approximately $2 million in services from FSISAC, which should have the added benefit of making the Next Generation FSISAC a reality.

In closing, I want to commend Suzanne Gorman for both her vision and her dedication. Without her tireless leadership, we would not be here today. Given her significant time spent in Washington, I know that she has a "day job" in New York with the Securities Industry Automation Corporation. So the Securities Industry Automation Corporation should also be congratulated for allowing her to spend so much of her time on an effort that benefits all of us.

Thank you.