Review - HR 6812 Introduced – SBA Cybersecurity Grant Pilot

Last month, Rep Joyce (R,OH) introduced HR 6812, the Small Business Cybersecurity Assistance Pilot Program Act. The bill would provide continued funding for the Cybersecurity Assistance Pilot Program through 2025 at the rate of $3 million per year. The bill also contains congressional reporting requirements.

Moving Forward

While Joyce is not a member of the House Small Business Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration, one of his cosponsors {Rep Garbarino (R,NY)} is a member. This means that there may be sufficient influence to see this bill considered in Committee. I see nothing in this bill that would engender any organized opposition. Even the authorization provision, which frequently impedes consideration of bills like this, should not be a problem since the Appropriations Committee is obviously already on board.

I suspect that the bill would receive significant bipartisan support in Committee and that that support should be large enough to allow this bill to be considered under the suspension of the rules process.

Commentary

This is a rather small ‘pilot’ grant program, but it still deserves better documentation of the purpose and scope of the program than the mention in passing in two separate spending bill explanatory statements that has been the sole documentation of the authorization of this program.

For more details on the history of this program and provisions of the bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-6812-introduced - subscription required.