Gardner Introduces Amendment to Protect DoD from Cyber Threats

Statement

Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy, introduced an amendment to S.2943, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (NDAA), which provides funding for the Department of Defense (DoD). The amendment would require the Comptroller General of the United States to release a report on DoD's telecommunications equipment that was purchased from suppliers tied to leading cyber-threat actors, which include Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper identified leading cyber-threat actors in an assessment released in February 2016 titled the "Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community."

"The United States must take every precaution to protect against cyber-crimes, particularly those originating from obvious bad actors like Iran and North Korea that have ramped up their malicious cyber activities," said Gardner. "My amendment would expose if and what telecommunications equipment used by DoD was manufactured by companies with ties to countries that pose a significant cyber threat to the United States. It is simply commonsense to determine if leading cyber-threat actors may have access to sensitive government information -- and my amendment would make sure of it."

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