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Strengthening American Cybersecurity Act of 2022 Overview
- Who: Leaders of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee have reintroduced cybersecurity legislation.
- Why: There have been a growing number of cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, and the senators say the bill will help strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity.
- Where: The bill was reintroduced in the U.S. Senate.
Legislation that would require operators of critical infrastructure to report cybersecurity episodes within 72 hours has been reintroduced in the senate.
The “Strengthening American Cybersecurity Act of 2022” bill was reintroduced by leaders of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee on Feb. 8 after it failed to get passed as part of last year’s defense policy spending bill.
The bipartisan bill was proposed by Michigan Democrat Gary Peters and Ohio Republican Rob Portman.
If passed, it would require critical infrastructure owners and operators, including certain businesses in the chemical, energy, manufacturing, telecommunications and other sectors, to report to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, within 72 hours if they experience a substantial cyberattack.
The bill would also require critical infrastructure owners and operators to report if they had made ransomware payments to hackers to CISA within 24 hours.
It would also update cybersecurity guidelines within the Federal Information Security Modernization Act.
New Bill Reduces Number of Businesses Required to Report Payments Made to Cybercriminals
The new legislation is similar to a set of bills combined late in 2021 and included, and then removed, from the final version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, passed in December 2021.
However the new bill has reduced the number of businesses that would have to report payments made to cybercriminals after ransomware attacks. Previously, any businesses with more than 50 employees would have to alert CISA if it paid a cybercriminal.
However, after criticism from Senate Republicans who said the law would be too much for small businesses, the mandate has been reduced to only include those operating critical infrastructure.
Meanwhile, an October cybersecurity report from Microsoft found Moscow-linked hacking groups are now increasingly targeting United States government organizations with government targets accounting for more than half of their targets for the year through June 2021, compared to just 3 percent the previous year.
The news comes as the Colonial Pipeline Company faces a lawsuit lodged by consumers and businesses after it had to shut down its pipeline due to a Russian cyberattack in May 2021.
The attack was perpetrated by a Russian hacking group that demanded a ransom after it allegedly gained access into Colonial’s systems. Colonial ultimately paid the hackers $4.4 million to end the assault, in addition to shutting down the pipeline serving vast swaths of the Eastern Seaboard for a time.
Additionally, Equifax has agreed to pay at least $380.5 million to resolve class action claims associated with its massive 2017 data breach, Accellion has reached a preliminary multimillion dollar deal that would settle multidistrict litigation stemming from massive data breaches of Accellion’s file transfer systems and Capital One has inked a deal to pay $190 million to compensate tens of millions of customers whose personal data was stolen by a hacker in 2019.
If you were affected by a data breach, you might be eligible to join or file a class action lawsuit. Lawyers are currently investigating recent data breaches nationwide and the impact that they’ve had on Americans (links to paid attorney content).
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