Committee Hearings – Week of 1-9-22

This week, with both the House and Senate meeting in Washington, there is a light hearing schedule. Most of the Senate hearings deal with confirmations. There is one cybersecurity hearing scheduled in the House.

Cybersecurity Hearing

On Tuesday the House Committee on Oversight and Reform will hold a hearing on “Cybersecurity for the New Frontier: Reforming the Federal Information Security Modernization Act”. The witness list includes:

• Gordo Bitko, Information Technology Industry Council (formerly CIO FBI),

• Jennifer Franks, GAO,

• Ross Nodurft, Alliance for Digital Innovation (formerly OMB Cybersecurity Team Chief),

• Grant Schneider, Vanable, (formerly NSC Cybersecurity Policy Director),

• Renee Wynn, RP Wynn Consulting LLC (formerly NASA CIO)

This hearing is about FISMA so it will contain little or no discussion about operation technology issues. It will, however, be the first chance for congresscritters to ask questions about the various log4j vulnerabilities (pg4) that are causing so many problems. It will be interesting to see how good the staff work is on Log4Shell by seeing how intelligent the questions are.

On the Floor

Lite schedule on the floor of the House this week. Interestingly, there are no scheduled bills to be considered under the suspension of the rules process. This may be due to the large number of  congressional Covid cases reported this weekend. The House is tightening down of Covid restrictions again. Unfortunately, no one is reporting on member or committee staffer infections, I suspect that those numbers are quite high.