Panel Backs Measure To Boost Federal Cybersecurity
A House Oversight and Government Reform panel Wednesday approved legislation mandating the creation of a permanent national office for cyberspace within the White House to oversee federal agency efforts to protect their computer systems cyber attacks and other threats.
Under the bill (H.R. 4900), approved by the Government Management Subcommittee by voice vote, the office would have a Senate-confirmed director and include a panel of government information technology experts tasked with guiding agency programs to tighten their computer security systems. The legislation would effectively institutionalize the White House office of cyber-security coordinator created by President Obama by executive order last year and now headed by Howard Schmidt, a veteran computer industry official who served as an adviser to former President George W. Bush.
Under an amendment offered by Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., and approved on voice vote, the bill would also make permanent the post of chief technology officer within the White House Office of Management and Budget, a job now held by Vivek Kundra. Connelly said he believed it was important to codify the position into law "so that it isn't simply handing out there on an executive order."
The legislation also would direct agencies to develop automatic systems for continuously monitoring their computer networks for deficiencies and risks instead of filing annual reports showing compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act as they are currently required to do.
House Oversight and Government Reform Government Management Subcommittee Chairwoman Diane Watson, D-Calf., the sponsor of the bill, said she believed that centralizing cyber-security operations in the White House was needed to streamline and coordinate agency efforts to protect government computer systems. She said that currently there were only layers of make-shift security.
A similar bill pending in the Senate would replace paper FISMA compliance with real-time monitoring of government IT systems, but would centralize government cyber-security authority in the Department of Homeland Security.
TechAmerica praised the subcommittee's efforts to update FISMA but voiced concern with a couple provisions in the House bill, including one that would create a prioritized list of technologies. "Such a list can become quickly outdated, thereby risking the continued use of technologies that are obsolete, and it can have the unintentional consequence of hampering innovation," TechAmerica President and CEO Phil Bond said in a Wednesday letter to Watson.
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