Committee Hearings – Week of 3-14-21

This week, with both the House and Senate in session, we will see a full slate of Congressional Hearings. There will be two House hearings about DHS management and a cybersecurity hearing. There is also a markup hearing in the Senate that includes a returning cybersecurity bill.

DHS Hearings

The House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday on “The Way Forward on Homeland Security”. The sole witness will be Alejandro Mayorkas, DHS Secretary.

The Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday on “DHS Management Challenges”.

Both of these hearings will be looking at high-level problems and solutions. Cybersecurity (mainly IT security) of federal computer systems will be a big topic with the Solarwinds and Microsoft email server hacks still active in the news. There might be some mention of control system security issues, but do not look for any ICS solutions.

Markup Hearing

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) will hold a business meeting on Wednesday. The Committee will take up twelve bills and four postal facility naming bills. Of interest here is S 658, the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium Act of 2021. It was introduced last week so there is no language available for review. I do suspect that it will be similar to S 333 that was introduced and passed in the Senate in the last session.

Cybersecurity

The HSAC will hold a hearing on Thursday on “Understanding and Responding to the SolarWinds Supply Chain Attack: The Federal Perspective”. There is no witness list currently available for this hearing so it is difficult to predict where the hearing will head.