Earlier this week, Sen Rosen (D,NV) introduced S 885, the Department of Homeland Security Civilian Cybersecurity Reserve Act. The bill would authorize DHS to establish a pilot program for a civilian cybersecurity reserve. No additional funding would be authorized by the bill.
This bill is nearly identical to the version of S 1324, the Civilian Cybersecurity Reserve Act, that was also introduced by Rosen and passed in the Senate under the unanimous consent process during the last session. No action was taken on the bill in the House.
Moving Forward
As I noted yesterday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is scheduled to take up this bill tomorrow along with 27 other bills. Typically, this means that there is broad support within the Committee for this bill, though there may be amendments that the Committee will consider. I suspect that there will be substantial bipartisan support for the bill. Last session, this version of the bill was able to pass the full Senate under the unanimous consent process, so it may be able to do so again.
Commentary
S 1324 passed late in the last session and never really had a
chance to be taken up in the House. I suspect that if it were to make it to the
floor for a vote that it would probably pass. The problem is going to be
getting it to the floor because this is another unfunded program that is going
to run afoul of the budgeting and spending restrictions planned for this
session in the Republican controlled House. This would be another program where
the spending hawks would be competing with the cybersecurity hawks in the Party
and there will only be so many of those fights that either side wants to get
into in the lead up to the 2024 elections. I am not sure that this would be a
hill the cybersecurity hawks would want to die on.
For more details about the provisions of this bill, see my
article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-885-introduced
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