Senate Passes HR 7327 – Secure Technology Act

Yesterday the Senate passed HR 7327, the Strengthening and Enhancing Cyber-capabilities by Utilizing Risk Exposure (Secure) Technology Act under the unanimous consent procedure. The GPO still does not have an official version of the bill available; all we have is the House draft.

As I noted earlier, the bill was introduced and passed in the House earlier yesterday. The bill contains three titles:

TITLE I—Department of Homeland Security information security;

TITLE II—Border patrol agent pay reform; and

TITLE III—Federal acquisition supply chain security

The Title I provisions are specifically targeted at DHS information technology systems. While the bill does use a definition of ‘security vulnerability’ from 6 USC 1501 it does not use the control system inclusive definition of ‘information system’ from that section; instead is specifies the IT-limited definition from 44 USC 3502.

Congress is working quickly on a number of bills as the end of the 115^th Congress quickly approaches.