U.S. Reps. Michael Burgess (R-TX) and John Ratcliffe (R-TX) held a joint hearing in Sherman, Texas, on Wednesday entitled “Cyber Preparedness and Response at the Local Level.”
Burgess is the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade. Ratcliffe is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies.
The purpose of the hearing was to seek help in providing a better understanding of how state and local officials prepare for, respond to and investigate cyber incidents. Officials hoped to learn about different cyber training opportunities for state and local officials to bolster cyber preparedness and response.
“While Chairman Ratcliffe’s subcommittee deals with the ‘.gov side’ of the world, my subcommittee deals with the ‘.com side’ of the world. Ultimately, data security is national security,” Burgess said. “This hearing comes at an ideal time as all Americans prepare to file their taxes next week and many will face the very real hurdle when they discover that their accounts that have been diverted in the past due to a breach of personal data.”
The Data Security and Breach Notification Act of 2015, H.R. 1770, would establish national standards for procedures used to notify consumers when there has been a breach of personal data. Forty-seven states have a security notification standard but there is no national standard.