HR 5856 Reported in Senate – DOD Appropriations

Yesterday the Senate Appropriations Committee filed their report on HR 5856, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2013. There is no mention of cybersecurity or cyber-warfare in the report. While the House version of this report recommended that DOD consolidate the reporting of cybersecurity funding in their budget request, the Senate is completely ignoring the issue.

When the Senate comes back to work in September this bill will probably be one that takes priority. It could also become a vehicle for cybersecurity amendments.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 07-16-12

As the time approaches for the House and Senate to take their lengthy summer break (and go into the full re-election mode) there is little time left for taking serious action on much of anything. With this in mind there is only one hearing this week that might be of interest to the cybersecurity community; everyone else can start planning their vacations.

Cybersecurity

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday looking at “Cyber Security and the Grid”. The witness include representatives from FERC (Director McClelland, Office of Energy Projects), NERC (President Cauley), GAO (Director Wilshusen, Information and Technology), and the Ohio PUC (Chairman Snitchler). It’s just a bit late in the session to be holding this hearing, but it is the Senate.

Cybersecurity on the House Floor

According to the House Majority Leader’s web site the House will consider HR 5856, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2013. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, there is little in the bill specifically mentioning cybersecurity, there will likely be some sort of amendments that will deal with cybersecurity or cyber-warfare issues. Or maybe not; only one amendment has been printed in the Congressional Record since the House Rules Committee hearing on this bill on June 28^th.

HR 5856 Introduced – DOD Appropriations

Just before the Memorial Day Weekend, during a proforma session, Rep. Young (R-FL) introduced HR 5856, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2013. While DOD has a major measure of responsibility for cybersecurity actions, there is nothing in the bill that mentions cybersecurity or cyber operations.

Last year we saw a number of items in the Appropriations Committee report on that DOD appropriations bill, but there are no programs mentioned in the report for HR 5856. Interestingly though, there is a rather lengthy comment about the lack of mention found in the Committee report (pg 208 – Adobe 218):

“The Committee acknowledges the threat to and from the cyber realm and believes it has been well documented; however, the resources being expended against the threat have not. In order to better evaluate the planning and resourcing for Department of Defense cyber activities, the Committee directs the Commander, United States Cyber Command, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense and each of the Service Secretaries, to provide the congressional defense committees separate budget justification material, in the form of budget documents as defined in the Department’s financial management regulation, that details the year-toyear budgets, schedule, and milestone goals over the Future Years Defense Program for the individual programs that support the goals of cyber initiatives. The programs detailed must include cyberspace operations, computer network operations, information assurance, and full spectrum cyber operations for the Department of Defense and the Services. Further, the Committee suggests that the Department continue to refine what activities, budget lines, and programs should be considered cyber in order to better coordinate and track these budgets.”

With the level of DOD responsibility for defending against cyber-attacks and conducting cyber-operations, this is certainly something that should show up in the documentation for both the President’s budget request, but also in the appropriations bills written by Congress.

It still wouldn’t be surprising to see amendments offered to this bill that address specific cybersecurity or cyber operations when it comes to the floor of the House next month.