The United States Senator: Report Every Cyber Attack to CISA

The bill, titled “Strengthening the American Cybersecurity Act,” said it combines language from three separate bills. The second part of the statement themed Cyber Incident Reviews stated that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)  receives, aggregates, analyzes, and cyber incidents, using processes consistent with the processes developed pursuant to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015.

The statement proceeded to mandate that entities under CISA jurisdictions that experience a covered cyber incident must report the situation to the Agency no later than 72 hours after it has been confirmed.

Sectors that fall under this mandate include healthcare and public health, along with information technology, emergency services and critical manufacturing. However, the bill also made provisions for incidences that involved ransom.

It stated that any party in the listed sectors that makes a ransom payment as a result of a ransomware attack against the it must report the payment to the Agency no later than 24 hours after the ransom has been paid.

There are claims that the bill seeks to modernize the government’s cybersecurity posture and authorize the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program to ensure federal agencies can adopt cloud-based technologies with the goal of improving government operations and efficiency.

What CISA Stands to Gain

Commenting on the ruling, Peters said the bill will ensure CISA is the leading government agency responsible for helping critical infrastructure operators and civilian federal agencies respond to and recover from major network breaches and mitigate operational impacts from hacks.

Bearing in mind the ongoing attacks on U.S. cyber infrastructure, he further stated that he will continue urging my colleagues in the House to pass this urgently needed legislation to improve public and private cybersecurity as new vulnerabilities are discovered.

He will also push to ensure that the federal government can [safely] and securely utilize cloud-based technology to save taxpayer dollars.