Pearce Votes For Enhanced Cybersecurity Protections

Statement

Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act of 2015, H.R. 1731. U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce issued the following statement:

"Technology and the internet improve our lives on a daily basis. However, despite the benefits, the internet poses a greater threat to our economic and physical wellbeing than ever before," stated Pearce.

"Every day, individuals, coordinated groups, and foreign governments execute millions of cyberattacks against the United States. These attacks range from attempts to steal classified defense secrets, which threaten our national security, to stealing the intellectual property of a business for the gain of another -- threatening our economic competitiveness globally. While the target is different, the tactics are often the same."

Pearce continued: "The work we have done this week enables businesses to proactively defend and combat against these attacks. By protecting individual privacy and information through multiple layers of scrubbing, these pieces of legislation allow the federal government and private business to share only the key information from a cyber-threat or the defense measure taken against such a threat. Cybersecurity is vitally important to the health of our nation, but it cannot come at the compromise of Americans' civil liberties and right to privacy. I believe the bills passed strike the correct balance between privacy and sharing of critical cyber-threat information."

It's estimated that $445 billion per year is lost to cybercrime across the world economy. In the federal government alone, there were 46,160 incidents reported in 2013.

This week the House passed the Protecting Cyber Networks Act (H.R. 1560) and the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act of 2015 (H.R. 1731), both strongly bipartisan bills, which help deter cyberattacks and would increase the exchange of hacking data between the government and businesses.

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