Committee Hearings – Week of 02-12-17

Both the House and Senate will be in session this week. The House continues to focus on repealing Obama Administration regulations and the Senate focuses on Cabinet nominations. There will be two cybersecurity related hearings that may be of interest to readers of this blog.

Self-Driving Cars

On Tuesday the Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing to look at “Self-Driving Cars: Road to Deployment”. The witness list includes:

• Mike Abelson, General Motors;

• Nidhi Kalra, RAND Center for Decision Making Under Uncertainty;

• Anders Karrberg, Volvo Car Group

• Joesph Okpaku, Lyft

• Gill Pratt, Toyota Research Institute

None of the current witness statements mention cybersecurity concerns with self-driving vehicles. Perhaps we will see some discussion during the questioning phase of the hearing. You probably should not hold your breath.

US Cybersecurity Capabilities

On Tuesday the Research and Technology Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on “Strengthening US Cybersecurity Capabilities”. The witness list includes:

• Charles H. Romine, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST);

• Iain Mulholland, VMware, Inc;

• Diana Burley, The George Washington University; and

• Gregory Wilshusen, Government Accountability Office (GAO)

Witness testimony documents are not yet available, so it is too early to tell if industrial control system security will be mentioned, but with no witnesses specifically representing ICS organizations it is probably not happening. The document to watch will be the new GAO report.

Committee Hearings, Cybersecurity Capabilities, Self-Driving Cars