Legislative Activity

Cyber Legislation Expected on the Senate Floor this Week

The Senate returns to Washington today after a one week recess and is expected to consider the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA/S. 754) on the floor this week. While Senators from both sides of the aisle agreed to a package of CISA amendments to consider on the floor in August, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) have been working in recent weeks to reduce the number of amendments to decrease the amount of time needed to debate the bill on the floor.

Leading up to the bill’s consideration, a number of interest groups have weighed in on CISA to indicate their support or concern with the bill in its current form. Last week, a group of financial services associations wrote a letter to Senators signifying their support for the bill while the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) posted a blog postnoting that the association does not support the legislation. The blog stated that CCIA wants to work with Congress on information sharing but could not support CISA given that its “prescribed mechanism for sharing of cyber threat information does not sufficiently protect users’ privacy or appropriately limit the permissible uses of information shared with the government.”

As we previously shared, if the Senate passes CISA, it will be conferenced with the House information sharing bills that were passed in April.

This Week’s Hearings:

• Wednesday, October 21: The House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Energy and Subcommittee on Research and Technology will host a joint hearing titled “Cybersecurity for Power Systems.”

• Wednesday, October 21: The House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing titled “Worldwide Threats and Homeland Security Challenges” featuring Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Nicholas Rasmussen and the Director of the FBI James Comey.