Senate Passes HR 1158 – Cyber Hunt Teams

Yesterday the Senate amended and then adopted HR 1158 , the DHS Cyber Hunt and Incident Response Teams Act, by unanimous consent. The amendment substituted the language from S 315 that was reported favorably by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The amendment restored provisions requiring an ‘entity requesting action by or technical assistance from’  the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) to approve the use of private sector cybersecurity specialists in the cyber hunt team providing assistance.

The bill authorizes the current US-CERT and ICSCERT action teams and provides for the use of private sector contractors on those teams.

The bill now goes back to the House for action on the amendment. I suspect that the House will agree to the slightly different wording, perhaps this week. The House passed the original version of the bill by a voice vote.