Bills Introduced – 06-07-17

Yesterday with both the House and Senate in session there were 49 bills introduced. Of those three may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 2807 To amend title 10, United States Code, to require congressional notification concerning sensitive military cyber operations and cyber weapons, and for other purposes. Rep. Thornberry, Mac [R-TX-13]

HR 2810 To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2018 for military activities of the Department of Defense and for military construction, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes. Rep. Thornberry, Mac [R-TX-13]

HR 2812 To direct the President to develop a strategy for the offensive use of cyber capabilities, and for other purposes. Rep. Correa, J. Luis [D-CA-46] 

I promise that this is not being turned into a military blog (GRIN), but military cyber weapons and strategy will probably have a serious impact on cybersecurity for control systems in critical infrastructure. We should certainly, for example, be prepared to defend critical infrastructure facilities from those types of control system attacks that our military contemplates executing against such facilities in enemy countries.

I will be watching HR 2807 for the critical definitions involved in outlining ‘sensitive military cyber operations and cyber weapons’ to see if Congress is intending to keep an eye on counter control system operations.

As always, I watch the military authorization and spending bills for cybersecurity provisions.

Last session there were a number of efforts (see HR 2708, HR 3039, and HR 5220 for example) related to requiring the President to establish norms for deciding what types of cyber-attacks would be considered ‘acts of war’. It will be interesting to see how HR 2812 differs from these earlier unsuccessful attempts.