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.

HR 624 Reported in House

Yesterday the House Intelligence Committee reported HR 624, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, as amended. The report is not yet available from the Government Printing Office (GPO). This formality is a prerequisite to this week’s consideration of this bill by the House.

BTW: The reports for HR 756, Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2013 (H Rept 113-33), and HR 967, Advancing America's Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Act of 2013 (H Rept 113-34), are now available from the GPO. There is no new information in either report. Both bills will be considered today under suspension of the rules.

Committee Hearings – Week of 4-14-13

This week the House and the Senate will be hard at work in Washington and the President’s budget request will take up a lot of time in committees. There will also be a cybersecurity hearing and a look at Sequestration. Oh yes, it’s going to be Cybersecurity Week on the floor of the House.

Budget Hearings

There are too many to discuss in detail so here is a listing:

• United States Coast Guard Budget – House Appropriations

• Department of Defense Budget – House Appropriations

• Department of Transportation Budget – House Appropriations

• President’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget Request for Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Programs – House Transportation

• Fiscal Year 2014 National Defense Authorization Budget Request for Department of Defense (DOD) Science and Technology Programs – House Armed Services

• The President’s FY 2014 Budget Request for the Department of Homeland Security – House Homeland Security

• An Overview of the Fiscal Year 2014 Budget Proposal at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) House Science

• The Homeland Security Department's Budget Submission for Fiscal Year 2014 – Senate Homeland Security

• The National Guard and Reserve Fiscal Year 2014 Budget Request – Senate Appropriations

I’ve added the NIST budget to the ones that I’ll be following this year because of the Cybersecurity Framework under development by that agency.

Cybersecurity

CISPA (HR 624) will be coming to the floor this week so there will be a House Rules Committee hearing on Tuesday afternoon to develop the rule for the consideration of the bill. The only question is if it will be an open rule with amendments from the floor (my guess – not) or a lengthy list of amendments included in the rule (probably). At least a couple of the amendments rejected in Committee last week may be considered by the Committee of the Whole House.

Sequestration

The Subcommittee on National Security of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will be holding a hearing on Thursday looking at Sequestration Oversight: Prioritizing Security over Administrative Costs at TSA. There is no witness list yet so we really have no idea if surface transportation security will be addressed, but based upon past history, I doubt it. Congress has a tendency to forget security of trains, trucks and busses.

Cybersecurity Week

As I mentioned earlier, CISPA will be coming to the floor of the House this week as will a number of other cybersecurity bills. At this point CISPA is the only one that will be covered by a Rule; the others will be debated under suspension of the rules.

On Tuesday three bills will be covered under suspension of the rules. This means no more than an hour of debate, no amendments and the leadership considers these bills a slam-dunk for passage since it takes a 3/5^th majority to pass bills this way. The bills that will be considered are:

• H.R. 1163 - Federal Information Security Amendments Act of 2013 

• H.R. 756 - Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2013 

• H.R. 967 - Advancing America’s Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Act of 2012 

HR 756 does contain some control system language as does HR 967 though neither are going to have a significant impact on ICS security issues. HR 1163 is a federal IT security measure that I am quite frankly ignoring.

The current plans for CISPA, according to the Majority Leader’s web site, is for debate to start on Wednesday with a final vote before 3:00 pm EDT on Thursday.

Two Cybersecurity Bills Reported in House

Yesterday there were two cybersecurity bills reported in the House by the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Those bills were HR 756, Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2013, and HR 967, the Advancing America's Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Act of 2013. The submission of these two reports clears the bills for action on the floor of the House as early as next week.

The actual reports are not yet available from the Government Printing Office. I did report on the markups of each of these bills (HR 756. HR 967) so the amended language should offer no real surprises, but there is frequently supporting information in the report that provides additional insight into how the resulting regulations should be written.