Senate Defeat Of Flawed Cybersecurity Bill Allows Time For Improvement
Today the Senate failed to reach cloture on the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 by a margin of 52-46 of the necessary 60 votes, effectively killing the current iteration. The bill would have directed the Department of Homeland Security to conduct sector-by-sector cybersecurity risk assessments of critical infrastructure, identify risk-based cybersecurity performance requirements, implement cyber response and restoration plans, develop voluntary requirements for notifications and data-sharing in the event of significant cyber incidents affecting critical infrastructure. President Obama previously called on Congress to pass the legislation, naming the cyber threat “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face”, despite having threatened to veto CISPA earlier this year due to privacy concerns similar to those raised by some opponents of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. Thethreat of cyber attack is very real. Public and private infrastructure around the world are vuln...