S 1917 Passed in Senate – K-12 Cybersecurity

Yesterday, the Senate took up and passed S 1917, the K-12 Cybersecurity Act of 2021, under the Senate’s unanimous consent process. There was no debate and no vote. The House will not take up the bill until sometime after it returns from their Summer Recess in September.

A version of this bill was introduced in the House (HR 4691), but there is also a competing bill (HR 4005). There has been no action on HR 4005, but HR 4691 has been adopted by the House Homeland Security Committee. The House leadership will determine if HR 4005 or S 1917 will be the bill considered by the House. In either case, the bill will almost certainly be considered under the suspension of the rules process.

HR 4691 Introduced - K–12 Cybersecurity

Last month, Rep Langevin introduced HR 4691, the K–12 Cybersecurity Act of 2021. The bill would require CISA to conduct a study on the specific cybersecurity risks facing K–12 educational institutions and develop an online cybersecurity training toolkit designed for officials at K–12 educational institutions. The bill is nearly identical to S 1917. No funding is authorized in the bill.

The only difference between the two bills (besides the bill numbers, of course) is that this version of the bill does not capitalize the word “congressional” the second time that it is used in §2(b)(2). This is a more appropriate usage than the capitalized version used in S 1917.

HR 4691 was considered by the House Homeland Security Committee on July 28^th, 2021. It was adopted without amendment as part of an en bloc approval of eight bills by a voice vote. This strong bipartisan support should allow the bill to be taken up by the whole House under the suspension of the rules process. This would allow for limited debate, no floor amendments and would require a super majority for passage.

As I noted in my article about S 1917 at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-1917-introduced - (subscription required), this bill utilizes the IT restrictive definition of the term ‘information systems’, thus limiting CISA support to administrative and instructional cybersecurity while ignoring the security of control systems used in the physical plant and security systems.

Bills Introduced – 7-26-21

Yesterday with both the House and Senate back in Washington, there were 42 bills introduced. One of those bills will be covered in this blog:

HR 4691 To establish a K-12 education cybersecurity initiative, and for other purposes. Rep. Langevin, James R. [D-RI-2]

This is the bill that I discussed briefly yesterday which makes it similar to S 1917. Determining just how similar will have to wait for the GPO to print the bill. Meanwhile, it will be marked up by the House Homeland Security Committee tomorrow.