The U.S. Senate announced that Strengthening American Cybersecurity Act is passed. The legislation forces critical infrastructure organizations to report incoming cyberattacks to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency within 72 hours and ransomware demands within 24 hours. The legislation was introduced on the 8th of February by Senators Rob Portman and Gary Peters, ranking member and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
I’m proud that the Senate moved quickly to pass my bipartisan Strengthening American Cybersecurity Act to give the National Cyber Director, @CISAgov, & other appropriate agencies broad visibility into the cyberattacks taking place across our nation daily.
Strengthening American Cybersecurity Act is a combination of pieces from the Cyber Incident Reporting Act, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2021, and the Federal Secure Cloud Improvement and Jobs Act which were also introduced by Peters and Portman. The 200-page act comes with various measures to modernize the cybersecurity posture. Senator Gary Peters said,
Senator Gary Peters
« As our nation continues to support Ukraine, we must ready ourselves for retaliatory cyber-attacks from the Russian government… This landmark legislation, which has now passed the Senate, is a significant step forward to ensuring the United States can fight back against cybercriminals and foreign adversaries who launch these persistent attacks.
Our landmark, bipartisan bill will ensure CISA is the lead government agency responsible for helping critical infrastructure operators and civilian federal agencies respond to and recover from major network breaches and mitigate operational impacts from hacks. I will continue urging my colleagues in the House to pass this urgently needed legislation to improve public and private cybersecurity as new vulnerabilities are discovered, and ensure that the federal government can safety and securely utilize cloud-based technology to save taxpayer dollars. »
