Committee Hearings – Week of 02-10-19

Apparently due to the Federal Funding Fiasco, Congress has been slow to start its committee processes. Last week we saw a bunch of organizational meetings finally being held. This week we start to see a more ‘normal’ hearing schedule. There are two potential hearings of interest here dealing with cybersecurity issues.

Cybersecurity Markup Hearing?

On Wednesday the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a business meeting. The agenda on the Committee web site does not list any cybersecurity bills, but the Senate hearing web site lists the following cybersecurity bills as bills that would be considered:

• S.315, to authorize cyber hunt and incident response teams at the Department of Homeland Security,

• S.333, to authorize the Secretary of Homeland Security to work with cybersecurity consortia for training, and

• An original bill entitled, "Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Program Act of 2019

This may be an old and out-of-date listing. The final bill listed above was introduced last week as S 406. None of these bills have been published yet, so I have not had a chance to review them.

Energy Cybersecurity

On Thursday the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on “To Consider the Status and Outlook for Cybersecurity Efforts in the Energy Industry”. The witness list includes:

• Neil Chatterjee, FERC;

• Karen Evans, CSER;

• William J. Keber, West Virginia National Guard Critical Infrastructure Protection Battalion

• James B. Robb, North American Electric Reliability Corporation; and

• David Edward Whitehead, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc.