Bipartisan bill to help secure electric grid introduced in House

A bipartisan bill that would require a report from the U.S. Departments of Defense, Energy and Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the security risks to the national electric grid was recently introduced to the House by U.S. Reps. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and Dan Lipinski (D-IL).

The legislation would also require each report to detail the potential effects of such security risks on the readiness of the military as well as provide recommendations for mitigating malicious cyber-enabled activities.

“In this day and age, with adversaries around the globe developing their cyber capabilities, we must redouble our efforts to protect against these sorts of attacks,” Stefanik said. “This legislation will help Congress and our military gain a better understanding of the vulnerabilities and dependencies of these systems in order to better protect our homeland, and I encourage my colleagues to support this effort.”

Fitzpatrick, who serves as a member of the House Homeland Security Committee’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee, noted that the bill is a crucial step towards ensuring Congress was doing everything it could to keep the nation safe from threats including state actors from North Korea and Russia, hacktivists, and terror groups.

“…cyber-security – especially when it comes to infrastructure like our electric grid – is a complex and serious national and economic security issue that our country will continue face over the decades to come,” Fitzpatrick said.