House Cyber Bill Provides New Protections Against Attacks

Press Release

The House of Representatives' Committee on Homeland Security today approved legislation to strengthen America's cyber defenses. The committee approved H.R. 1731, the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act of 2015, by voice vote.

Congressman Patrick Meehan (PA-07), who chaired the committee's cybersecurity panel in the last Congress, received the unanimous approval of the House earlier today to temporarily fill a vacancy on the committee. Under Meehan's leadership, Congress passed the first meaningful cyber legislation signed into law in more than a decade.

"Staying one step ahead of the cyber threat and protecting America's critical infrastructure requires real-time information-sharing," Meehan said. "The legislation enables the private sector to share threat information with the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center and adds robust new privacy protections. The bill builds on work we did last Congress to authorize the NCCIC's mission into law. I was pleased to see the Committee take these new steps forward and was honored to join with Chairman McCaul again to help."

The legislation comes after President Obama proposed in January providing liability protection to companies that share cyber threat information with the Department of Homeland Security. Today's bill builds on that proposal to enable businesses like Sony, Target or Home Depot to voluntarily share cyber-attack information with the civilian NCCIC, making it the lead civilian interface for the federal government.

Meehan said the Committee's "commitment to the protection of our civil liberties has been foremost in our minds." To accomplish this goal, the bill creates robust privacy protections by requiring companies to perform multiple "scrubs" of personal information before sharing with the NCCIC, and it bolsters DHS's existing Privacy Office to ensure NCCIC complies with existing privacy statutes.

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