Review - S 2520 Reported in Senate – State and Local Cybersecurity

Last month, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee published their report on S 2520, the State and Local Government Cybersecurity Act of 2021. The Committee took up the bill back in August and approved substitute language for the bill.

The new language for S 2520 includes changes in definitions, removes the proposed changes to 6 USC 652, and revises the proposed subsections (p) and (q) to be added to 6 USC 659. What does not change is that the existing CISA outreach programs to State and local governments remains in effect.

This bill is now available for consideration by the full Senate. Unfortunately, this bill is not important enough to take up the time needed for consideration under regular order. I would suspect that there would be no specific opposition to this bill, so it could conceivably be considered under the Senate’s unanimous consent process, but that is subject to all sort’s of unrelated political objections. The most likely way for this to move forward is to be combined with some ‘must pass’ legislation, probably the FY 2020 spending bill that is due next month.

For more details about the changes in the bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-2520-reported-in-senate - subscription required.