U.S. Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI) and Rob Portman (R-OH) are espousing the benefits of a critical infrastructure cybersecurity threat reporting provision signed into law as a part of the government funding legislation.
Peters and Portman authored the provision requiring critical infrastructure owners and operators to report to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) if they experience a substantial cyber-attack or make a ransomware payment.
“In the face of significant cybersecurity threats to our country – including potential retaliatory cyber-attacks from Russia for our support in Ukraine – we must ensure our nation is prepared to defend our most essential networks,” Peters said. “This historic, new law will make major updates to our cybersecurity policy to ensure that, for the first time ever, every single critical infrastructure owner and operator in America is reporting cyber-attacks and ransomware payments to the federal government.”
Peters and Portman said the action serves as a significant step in aiding the nation in combating potential cyber-attacks sponsored by foreign adversaries that include potential threats from the Russian government in retaliation for domestic support in Ukraine.
“As our nation rightly supports Ukraine during Russia’s illegal, unjustifiable assault, I am concerned the threat of Russian cyber and ransomware attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure will increase,” Portman, chairman and ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), said. “The federal government must be able to quickly coordinate a response and hold these bad actors accountable. Now that our bipartisan legislation has been signed into law, it will give the National Cyber Director, CISA, and other appropriate agencies broad visibility into the cyberattacks taking place across our nation on a daily basis to enable a whole-of-government response, mitigation, and warning to critical infrastructure and others of ongoing and imminent attacks.”