Russian Cyber Threats Spur Senate Action on Hack Reporting (1)

The U.S. Senate could soon advance a package of cybersecurity bills as concerns grow about hacking threats from Russia.

Backers of the legislation are checking to see if any senators oppose the three cybersecurity bills, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said Tuesday.

If there is no opposition, Peters said he and co-sponsor Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) will ask for the legislation to be passed by unanimous consent — a process that would expedite passage to as soon as Tuesday. Peters and Portman lead the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The U.S. needs to enhance its cybersecurity tools as Russian cyber warfare against the U.S. continues and potentially increases, Portman said on the Senate floor Monday.

Portman called for action on three measures: the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program Act (FedRAMP).

The three bills were bundled last month in the Strengthening American Cybersecurity Act (S. 3600).

The bills would “help protect our critical infrastructure on the private sector side but also protect our sensitive government information, national security data,” Portman said. “So we can do something this week by passing that legislation.”

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved a bill (S. 2875) in October that would require critical infrastructure operators to report cyberattacks, as well as FISMA (S. 2902) to require federal agencies to report cyberattacks. In December it approved a bill (S. 3099) to update the FedRAMP cloud computing program.

Peters is the sponsor of all three measures.

To contact the reporters on this story: Maria Curi at mcuri@bloombergindustry.com; Nancy Ognanovich in Washington at nognanov@bgov.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sarah Babbage at sbabbage@bgov.com; Robin Meszoly at rmeszoly@bgov.com