The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a five-year cost estimate totaling $556 million for the proposed Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2013.
The bipartisan bill, introduced by Reps. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.), would cost $504 million from 2014-2018 and an additional $52 million after 2018, according to the CBO’s report.
The bill would allocate research funding to the National Science Foundation, which would then give grants to universities to establish centers for cybersecurity studies as well as graduate student traineeships. The legislation would also require the National Institute of Standards and Technology to further its awareness training and standard setting for personal information stored on computers. Lastly, the bill would create a task force to advise Congress in the future.
The 2013 act is a reincarnation of the Cybersecurity Enhancement Acts of 2012 and 2010. The 2012 version passed the House 395-10 but died in Senate committee negotiations. The act was reintroduced in February.
The act previously failed when the Senate attempted to combine all proposed cyber bills into a comprehensive law, which ultimately did not materialize. More optimism surrounds the third attempt at passage, according to a Congressional source. The source said the general feeling was that 2013 is the year for cyber legislation following the President’s executive order on protecting critical infrastructure.
The McCaul-Lipinski act, however, may be competing with the Senate’s Cybersecurity and American Cyber Competitiveness Act of 2013. Democratic Sens. Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), Tom Carper (Del.) and Dianne Feinstein (Cali.) introduced the similar legislation in January. It is under Senate committee review.