Senate Approves McCaskill-Backed Bill Addressing Cybersecurity Threats to Small Businesses

Press Release

With National Cybersecurity Awareness Month beginning, a McCaskill-backed bipartisan bill that will help Missouri small businesses protect themselves against cyberattacks unanimously passed the Senate, bringing it one step closer to becoming law.

"Cyberattacks can be especially devastating to small businesses--even forcing them to shut their doors because it'd be too expensive or difficult to recover," McCaskill said. "I'm glad to join with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to help make sure Missouri small business owners know the best ways to prevent cyberattacks and keep their data safe."

The bill, Making Available Information Now to Strengthen Trust and Resilience and Enhance Enterprise Technology (MAIN STREET) Cybersecurity Act, will help small businesses by requiring the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology to specifically consider small businesses when updating its voluntary guidance on how to guard against cyberattacks. The legislation is supported by leading business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

According to U.S. Small Business Administration data, small businesses in Missouri make up 97.5 percent of all Missouri businesses. The state has 507,712 small businesses, employing over one million workers. Small businesses are vulnerable to cyberattack and depending on the severity, many victims have trouble recovering and are forced out of business. A December 2016 report from the Missouri Cybersecurity Task Force called for increased support for small businesses around cybersecurity threats: "Many organizations around the State of Missouri lack the necessary resources to properly protect themselves from cybersecurity attacks…. Smaller organizations, including small businesses, schools, hospitals, banks, local government, and local utilities, deliver many essential services to Missouri citizens."

McCaskill has long supported Congressional action to address the nation's vulnerability to cyberattacks. Following the Equifax hack, McCaskill continued her push for her legislation to empower consumers by enhancing the accuracy of their credit reports and making it easier to dispute potential errors. She serves as the top-ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which earlier this year unanimously approved a McCaskill-backed bill that will help protect small businesses against fraud when they register to apply for federal contracts. Following the Office of Personnel Management data breach, which compromised the personal information of at least 21.5 million individuals, McCaskill and a group of bipartisan Senators introduced language that was signed into law increasing the Department of Homeland Security's ability to protect federal civilian networks from cyberattacks.

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