July 22, 2015

Following Cyber Attack At OPM, Senator Collins Leads Bipartisan Delegation To Introduce Cybersecurity Bill

This Morning, Senator Collins Spoke from the Senate
Floor and Led a Bipartisan Press Conference to Introduce the Bill

Click HERE to watch Senator Collins speak from the
Senate floor in support of the bill

Click HERE for to watch Senator Collins’ remarks
from the bipartisan press conference

      WASHINGTON, D.C.—Following the recent cyber-attack at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) which compromised the personal information of at least 21.5 million individuals, U.S. Senator Susan Collins, a Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, led a bipartisan delegation of Senators to introduce legislation that would bolster the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) authority to protect federal civilian networks. The other original co-sponsors of the legislation include Senators Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Dan Coats (R-IN), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), and Claire McCaskill (D-MO).

“The recent cyber attack at OPM affected a staggering number of Americans and exposed a tremendous vulnerability with the status quo in the defense of federal civilian networks. Like millions of Americans, I received a letter that my personal data had been compromised,” said Senator Collins.

      While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has the mandate to protect the .gov domain, it only has limited authorities to do so. At present, DHS does not have the authority to monitor the networks of government agencies unless they have permission from that agency. DHS also cannot regularly deploy countermeasures to block malware without permission from the agency.

This limited authority hinders the security of .gov information systems which — as evidenced by the recent OPM attack — contain highly sensitive personal data such as Social Security numbers, home addresses, dates of birth, and in some cases, extensive background information of federal employees, retirees, and contractors.

“This attack was a stark reminder that our adversaries are increasingly turning to the cyber realm and we must make certain that the Department of Homeland Security is empowered to deploy effective tools in the .gov domain to ensure that government agencies are properly protected. This bipartisan legislation is crucial to securing our government systems and helping to prevent future, potentially devastating cyber attacks against our nation,” Senator Collins said.

  To fix this problem, the bipartisan Federal Information Security Management Reform Act of 2015 (FISMA Reform) takes five important steps to strengthen the security of the networks of our federal civilian agencies:

This legislation would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to operate intrusion detection and prevention capabilities on all federal agencies on the .gov domain.

The bipartisan bill would also direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to conduct risk assessments of any network within the government domain.

The bill would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to operate defensive countermeasures on these networks once a cyber threat has been detected.

The legislation would strengthen and streamline the authority Congress gave to DHS last year to issue binding operational directives to federal agencies, especially to respond to substantial cyber security threats in emergency circumstances.

The bill would require the Office of Management and Budget to report to Congress annually on the extent to which OMB has exercised its existing authority to enforce government wide cyber security standards.

By enacting this legislation, DHS will be in a stronger position to detect and reduce the likelihood of other cyberattacks like the ones we saw at OPM.