Review - S 2993 Introduced – Cyber Exercise Program

Earlier this month, Sen Rosen (D,NV) introduced S 2993, the CISA Cyber Exercise Act. The bill would amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 by adding a new §2220A, National cyber exercise program. It would formally establish an existing exercise program to evaluate the National Cyber Incident Response Plan, and other related plans and strategies. No funding is authorized by this bill.

Rosen is a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration. This means that there should be adequate influence available to see this bill considered in Committee. I see nothing in the bill that would engender any organized opposition. I suspect that the bill would receive significant bipartisan support in Committee. The bill is not important enough to be considered under regular order in the Senate, but it might be able to survive the unanimous consent process since it is simply codifying and existing program in DHS.

Commentary

The alert reader will have noticed that §2220A has been used by a number of bills for different proposed amendments to the Homeland Security Act of 2002. This is because this is the next section available in that Act. When any of these bills is finally passed and ready to send to the President for signature, the clerk for whichever body is the last to take action will be authorized to make ‘make such changes as necessary’ to the section numbering. If this happens the way it should, we will not see the ongoing renumbering scrambling that we see in §2(b) in this bill (as we have seen in almost every bill that proposes to add a new §2220A).

For more details about the proposed program requirements, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-2993-introduced - subscription required.