Congressional Hearings – Week of 02-06-12

Congress won’t be anywhere near as interesting this week with only three hearings that might be of interest to the chemical security and cyber security communities. The one hearing deals with port security issues and the other two deal with cyber security issues.

Port Security

On Tuesday the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security will hold the first in a series of hearings on ‘Protecting our Ports, Increasing Commerce and Security the Supply Chain’. I doubt that there will really be very much talk about security issues at chemical facilities in and around ports. There will be a GAO report issued at the hearing.

Cyber Security

The House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology will hold a hearing on Wednesday looking at ‘Threats to Communications Networks and Private Sector Responses’. No witness list is yet available, but I’m fairly certain that ICS networks will be overlooked at this hearing.

The House Science and Technology Committee will be marking up HR 3934, the Advancing America’s Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Act of 2012 at a hearing on Tuesday. I’ve kind of ignored this bill as being beyond the ICS realm, but I’m probably going to look at it in a separate blog because I noticed an interesting new term when I scanned it tonight; ‘cyber-physical systems’. It’s still an R&D bill not a regulatory bill, but it might be interesting none-the-less.