Senate co-sponsors of bi-partisan legislation that would give the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authority to designate which private infrastructure in the country should be required to meet certain performance requirements when it comes to protecting their assets from cyber threats say an alternative bill submitted by eight Republican senators falls short of advancing critical infrastructure security in the cyber domain.
The SECURE IT Act (S. 2151), introduced by the Republican senators last week, “does little to ensure that we improve the security of critical infrastructure, not even the security of those systems that could cause catastrophic harm and mass casualties if damaged by a cyber attack,” the co-sponsors of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 (S. 2105) said in a statement last Friday. The authors of the Cybersecurity Act are Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I/D-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Commerce Committee, and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Select Intelligence Committee.
The Cybersecurity Act would permit owners and operators of critical infrastructure that think their systems were wrongly
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required to meet the performance standards issued by DHS to appeal.
The legislation would also allow owners and operators of critical assets to determine how to meet performance requirements and verify that the requirements are being met.
The group of bi-partisan senators is also concerned that the SECURE IT Act “would apparently displace DHS from the role it is already performing to help secure the federal government’s own computer networks.”
The statement by the four senators marks the first time they have listed specific concerns with the alternative cyber measure. On the other hand, the Republicans behind the SECURE IT Act oppose any new regulation of the private sector and instead want to improve cyber security of privately-owned critical infrastructure through better collaboration and information sharing between the private and public sectors.
Separately, the former chairmen of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, urged Senate leaders to begin acting soon on cyber security legislation, in particular the bi-partisan bill.
“We are encouraged by the significant legislative drafting efforts by multiple Senate Committee over the last three years, and hope that the bipartisan cyber security legislation they have produced can be brought to the floor,” Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and Hamilton, a former Democratic United States Representative from Indiana, said in their letter to Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate majority and minority leaders respectively.
Kean and Hamilton, who now chair the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Homeland Security Project, are concerned that that jurisdictional and procedural issues are being raised within the Senate that would hinder moving forward with the cyber legislation toward a vote. Those jurisdictional and procedural concerns have been raised by the eight Republicans sponsoring the SECURE IT Act, which include Sens. Richard Burr (N.C.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Dan Coats (Ind.), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Ron Johnson (Wis.).
The BPC also said yesterday that Kean and Hamilton have asked Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA and National Security Agency, and businessman Mortimer Zuckerman, to lead a new task force on cyber security. The task force has already begun to meet and is looking at how to improve collaboration between the government and private sector, the BPC said.