President Joe Biden has signed three bipartisan cybersecurity bills aimed to strengthen ties between the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and state and local governments.
Government agencies are frequent targets of hackers, many of whom consider it low lying fruit for a lack of necessary resources to lock down their networks. Indeed, Michigan, the home state of Sen. Gary Peters (D), who authored the measures, is hit by 90 million hacking attempts daily, according to its chief security officer. Taken together, the bills are intended to increase coordination between the federal government and state and local governments, fortify the cyber workforce and secure federal information technology supply chains against cyber threats.
The State and Local Government Cybersecurity Act facilitates coordination between the Department of Homeland Security and state and local governments in several key areas:
The Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Program Act creates a civilian personnel rotation program for cybersecurity professionals at federal agencies. The legislation:
And, the Supply Chain Security Training Act:
“Increasingly complicated cyber-attacks on everything from state and local networks to federal information technology systems show why our nation must have adequate resources and qualified personnel to defend against criminal hackers and foreign adversaries for years to come,” said Peters. “These new laws will bolster cybersecurity at every level of government, and ensure we are prepared to prevent cyber-attacks that continue to disrupt lives and livelihoods, and threaten our national security.”
