CybersecurityCongressional approval of cybersecurity bill looks promising
Amid the partisan acrimony of the budget battles on Capitol Hill, the Obama administration and the Senate have made promising efforts to pass a sweeping cybersecurity bill in a rare show of bipartisan agreement; the bill is now at the top of the Senate’s agenda, and Senator Harry Reid (D – Nevada), the majority leader, said he plans to bring the bill to the floor during the first working session of 2012
Bipartisan support promises passage of cybersecurity bill // Source: sonxeber.az
Amid the partisan acrimony of the budget battles on Capitol Hill, the Obama administration and the Senate have made promising efforts to pass a sweeping cybersecurity bill in a rare show of bipartisan agreement.
The bill is now at the top of the Senate’s agenda, and Senator Harry Reid (D – Nevada), the majority leader, said he plans to bring the bill to the floor during the first working session of 2012.
“Given the magnitude of the threat and the gaps in the government’s ability to respond, we cannot afford to delay action on this critical legislation,” Reid wrote in a letter to Senator Mitch McConnell (R – Kentucky), the minority leader. “For that reason, it is my intent to bring comprehensive cyber security legislation to the Senate floor for consideration during the first Senate work period of next year.”
The bill was first proposed by President Obama in May and includes sweeping measures like making DHS the lead agency responsible for protecting the government’s networks as well as the private sector. In addition, critical infrastructure operators would be required to develop a cybersecurity plan that they would have to submit to DHS for approval.
Since the bill’s introduction, cybersecurity experts and defense officials have sounded stark warnings about the dangers of cyberattacks.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in June, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said, “The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyberattack that cripples our power systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems.”
More recently, last month DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano warned that a cyberattack on critical infrastructure “could cause loss of life but also a huge economic loss.”
It appears that lawmakers are heeding these dire warnings as they are willing to sacrifice some of their party’s ideals and compromise in order to pass a bill as quickly as possible.
“It is my firm hope that the working groups will be able to achieve an agreement on legislation by then, but I believe the cyber threat to be of such urgency that we must act whether or not such agreement can be reached,” Reid wrote in his recent letter to McConnell.
In addition, Reid said the recommendations released by the House Republican Cybersecurity Task Force last month were “fully consistent with our efforts.”
Staunch supporters of cybersecurity legislation welcomed Reid’s announcement.
Senator Joe Lieberman (I – Connecticut), the chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, along with Senators Susan Collins (R – Maine) and Tom Carper (D – Delaware) have repeatedly urged Reid to bring the bill to open debate on the floor in the past.
In a joint statement, the three senators said, “Every day Congress fails to strengthen the cybersecurity of the nation’s critical infrastructure is another day of unacceptable risk for our country.”
“Hackers, criminals, and antagonistic foreign powers are maliciously probing our cyber defenses every day on an unprecedented scale, and it is no secret they have found our defenses to be vulnerable,” they continued. “There is no such thing as 100 percent security, on- or offline, but we must take action to strengthen our defenses against those who are constantly working to do us harm.”
