HR 3138 Reported in House - State and Local Cybersecurity Improvement Act

Tuesday, when the House met in pro forma session, it was announced that the House Homeland Security Committee had filed their report on HR 3138 (subscription required), the State and Local Cybersecurity Improvement Act. A copy of the report was published by the GPO as was the revised language for the bill. The Committee met on May 18^th, 2021 and approved substitute language (subscription required) and ordered the bill reported favorably.

I commented here earlier that I thought there the bill would probably be considered by the full house before the summer recess. With the early publication of the Report (these usually take months to file), Rep Thompson (D,MS and Chair of the Homeland Security Committee) is signaling that this bill is considered very important. This indicates that the bill will probably be considered by the full House sooner rather than later, possibly as soon as the week of June 14^th when the House returns to Washington.

There is an interesting comment in the Committee’s report. On page 13, towards the end of the ‘Background and Need for Legislation’ section, the Committee notes that:

“H.R. 3138 has been endorsed by NASCIO [National Association of State Chief Information Security Officers’]. Additionally, on May 20, 2021, the following groups urged that H.R. 3138 be included in any infrastructure package advanced by Congress [emphasis added]: Rapid7, Alliance for Digital Innovation, Avast, Broadcom, Bugcrowd, Citrix, Cybereason, Cybersecurity Coalition, Cyber Threat Alliance, Disclose.io, Global Cyber Alliance, GRIMM, ICS Village, Institute for Security and Technology, Luta, McAfee, SCYTHE, Security Scorecard, and Tenable.”

I think that this bill will pass in the House on its own merits, but it could easily die between passage and consideration in the Senate like HR 5823 did last year. Adding the bill to the infrastructure bill that is still being crafted could be a way to move this language through the Senate. This bill could easily be added as an amendment during the floor debate in the House on such a bill if it were not included in the initial language.