On and off Capitol Hill, those watching cybersecurity worry the lapse of two key federal programs will discourage information sharing between companies and the federal government, leaving an opening for a cyberattack. And if an attack occurred, the nation’s cybersecurity agency’s shutdown staffing level might not be sufficient to face it head-on.
As government funding expired, so too did the 2015-era law known as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA 2015, and the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program. On top of those expirations, the Homeland Security Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is operating with a fraction of its workforce since appropriations lapsed last week.
Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced a bill earlier this week that would reauthorize the CISA law for 10 years with a provision to make its protections retroactive to Oct. 1, when the law lapsed.
