Upton, Pitts seek insight into FDA’s information security

As a response to the growing threat of malicious hacking scandals and cyber security threats, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Health Subcommittee Chairman Joseph Pitts (R-PA) sent a letter on Wednesday to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking insight into its information detection process.

As part of the FDA legal obligations under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, in addition to several other civil and criminal laws, the FDA has a responsibility to disclose the measures it is taking to protect important information and trade secrets across American industry.

Concerns over the safety of some of the country’s largest companies’ proprietary commercial grew after news of several controversial incidents emerged from the FDA.

“The Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) has recently expanded FDA’s access to sensitive proprietary information,” Subcommittee Chairmen Upton and Pitts said in the letter. “Recent cyber security breaches at FDA and a criminal insider trading case involving an FDA official accessing information from drug review files in which he was not a part of the review team and did not have a need to know highlight the importance of FDA’s ability to safeguard information security. Since FDA now has access to and possession of the most highly sensitive and proprietary information such as recipes and formulas, the committee seeks specific information from FDA on actions and plans for protecting this kind of information.”