Homeland Security Markups – 3-18-21

On Thursday the House Homeland Security Committee held a markup hearing on seven bills. All of the bills were passed by unanimous consent after three of the bills were amended. The four bills that I have covered here in this blog included:

HR 1833 – Amended and passed,

HR 1850 – Passed,

HR 1871 – Passed

HR 1833 – DHS ICS Capabilities Enhancement Act

There were two amendments adopted for this bill. The first was proposed by Rep Langevin (D,RI). It inserted the words ‘Sector Risk Management Agencies’ in three places in the bill, indicating the need for NCCIC-ICS to coordinate their ICS security tasks in coordination with these agencies. This brings the bill more in-line with HR 5733 that was introduced in 2018.

The second amendment was proposed by Rep Torres (D,NY). It added a requirement for a GAO report within 2 years of the passage of this bill. GAO would be specifically tasked to address {new §2(c)}:

•Any interagency coordination challenges to the ability of the Director of the CISA to lead Federal efforts to identify and mitigate cybersecurity threats to industrial control systems,

• The degree to which the Agency has adequate capacity, expertise, and resources to carry out threat hunting and incident response capabilities to mitigate cybersecurity threats to industrial control systems, as well as additional resources that would be needed to close any operational gaps in such capabilities.

• The extent to which industrial control system stakeholders sought cybersecurity technical assistance from the Agency, and the utility and effectiveness of such technical assistance.

• The degree to which the Agency works with security researchers and other industrial control systems stakeholders to provide vulnerability information to the industrial control systems community.

Moving Forward

The unanimous consent passage of these measures indicates that there is wide spread, bipartisan support for all of these bills. I expect that all these bills will move to the floor of the House under the suspension of the rules process. Typically bills will not be considered by the Full House until reports are published, but that is not a requirement. I would not be surprised to see HR 1833 move to the floor when the House returns to session after the Easter break on April 13^th.