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December 12, 2014

Congress Passes Cybersecurity Legislation

(Washington, DC) – Yesterday, the House and Senate each passed S. 1353, the Cybersecurity Act of 2013 with bipartisan support. The bill now heads to the President’s desk for signature. The bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent with an amendment and then passed the House without objection.

S. 1353 incorporates a number of provisions from H.R. 756, the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2013 that moved on a bipartisan basis through the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, and then was passed overwhelmingly on the House floor in April 2013.

Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) said, “Cybersecurity threats impact our economic way of life, our privacy, and our national security. We must continue to be vigilant and innovative to defend our nation and our citizens against harmful cyber-attacks. With this valuable piece of legislation we are making an important step forward to reduce our nation’s vulnerabilities in this area.”

The bill gives the Secretary of Commerce the authority to develop public-private partnerships for the purpose of creating voluntary standards that would help mitigate cybersecurity risks to critical infrastructure. These public-private partnerships will ensure substantial input from key stakeholders across industry and government. This bill also strengthens our cybersecurity by coordinating and prioritizing the Federal cybersecurity R&D portfolio, improving the transfer of cybersecurity technologies to the marketplace, and by training an IT workforce that can meet the growing needs of both the public and private sectors. Finally, the bill promotes the development of tools to better enable Federal agencies to secure their systems.

Ranking Member Dan Lipinski (D-IL) of the Research & Technology Subcommittee was an original cosponsor of H.R. 756. Mr. Lipinski said, “Since I first introduced this bill in 2010, cyber threats have gotten much worse. Every day, we wake up to reports of more cyber-attacks in this country and around the world.  In the United States, these attacks have the potential to destroy our military and economic security.  American workers have lost jobs and businesses have been damaged because of cyber espionage, and that’s why it has been a priority of mine for years to get this bill onto the President’s desk to help America thwart cyber-attacks.”