Committee Hearings – Week of 10-01-17

This week with the House and Senate both in session in the first day of the new fiscal year, the lawmakers’ focus expands. We have four hearings of potential interest, two markup hearings and two cybersecurity hearings.

Markup Hearings

As I mentioned earlier, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will hold their markup hearing on Wednesday. In addition to the markup of S 1885, the Committee will also take-up S 1872 [note: this is a link to the committee draft], the TSA Modernization Act. I mentioned this briefly when it was introduced last week, but I will not really cover this bill since it has little to do with surface transportation security. I will note that it is attempting to finally reword the current DOT referenced authorization of the TSA {49 USC 114} to move it to where it actually resides in DHS.

Also on Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a markup hearing that will cover a number of bills (many that have yet to have been introduced). It will specifically include S 1281, the HACK DHS Act of 2017. I would like to note that in my post on the bill, I made the statement that Sen. Hassan (D,NH) was not a member of the Homeland Security Committee, but she is currently a member.

Cybersecurity Hearings

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday on “Examining DHS’s Cybersecurity Mission”. The witness list includes:

• Patricia Hoffman, DOE;
• Christopher Krebs, DHS; and

• Jeanette Manfra, DHS

It will be interesting to see if this hearing addresses the reorganization of DHS cyber activities that includes the move of ICS-CERT to NCCIC.

On Tuesday the Information Technology Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on “Cybersecurity of the Internet of Things”. This hearing was originally scheduled for 09-27-17. The witness list includes:

• Matthew J. Eggers, US Chamber of Commerce;

• Josh Corman, Atlantic Council;

• Tommy Ross, The Software Alliance (BSA); and

• Ray O’Farrell, VMware

According to the hearing website the purpose of the hearing is:

• To examine the use of devices that comprise the Internet of Things (IoT) and their current and potential uses in federal government.

• To explore potential cyber threats posed by the use of IoT devices.

• To review private sector recommendations for securing the IoT, and explore potential legislative solutions.