House Passes Three Cybersecurity Bills

Today the House considered and passed three cybersecurity bills with broad bipartisan support. All three bills were considered under suspension of the rules which requires a 2/3 vote for passage (I incorrectly said 3/5 the other day). The three bills were:

• HR 756, the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2013, 402 – 16;

• HR 967, the Advancing America’s Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Act of 2012, 406 – 11; and

• HR 1163, the Federal Information Security Amendments Act of 2013, 416 – 0.

As I expected the no votes were all Republicans; presumably over spending objectives.

If any of these bills make it to the floor of the Senate, they will almost certainly pass with similar bipartisan support. Last session versions of these bills passed in the House only to be ignored by Sen. Reid (D,NV) in the Senate because he was attempting to push through a comprehensive cybersecurity bill. With less pressure on Reid this year because of the President's cybersecurity executive order, there is an increased chance that these bills might be considered and passed in the Senate.

Bills Introduced – 03-14-13

It was a relatively busy day for submitting legislation in both houses of Congress yesterday, 24 bills in the Senate and 59 in the House. Two of the bills may end up being of interest to members of the chemical safety/security community and the cybersecurity community, HR 1163 and HR 1204.

HR 1163 Latest Title: To amend chapter 35 of title 44, United States Code, to revise requirements relating to Federal information security, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Issa, Darrell E. (R,CA)

HR 1204 Latest Title: To amend title 49, United States Code, to direct the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security (Transportation Security Administration) to establish an Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Thompson, Bennie G. (D,MS)

HR 1163 could end up being anything from a bill to regulate federal IT security measures to addressing how classified information is handled. If it is the latter, it could have some impact on information sharing with critical infrastructure. That would be the most likely way that this could be of potential interest to readers of this blog.

HR 1204 is most likely going to be another passenger related security measure. It could, however, include provisions for the ASAC to look at cargo security. If that’s the case it would be a bill that I would be following.

NOTE: The Library of Congress legislative web site, Thomas.LOC.gov, is having some sort of problems this morning. It doesn’t currently list the 24 bills introduced yesterday in the Senate. Fortunately, the Congressional Record site was updated and I could review the bill titles there.