Mikulski joins chorus calling for cybersecurity executive order

By Brendan Sasso - 09/27/12 03:51 PM ET

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) is urging President Obama to issue an executive order on cybersecurity, saying the country can't wait for Congress to act.

Mikulski is one of the co-sponsors of the Cybersecurity Act, which failed to attract enough Republican support to clear the Senate last month.

"I remain a strong advocate for the bill and hope that it will one day be passed by the Senate," she wrote in a letter sent last week and released publicly on Thursday. "However, the need for better protection of our nation’s critical infrastructure cannot wait for Senate procedures and politics to work themselves out — we must act now to safeguard our country from potentially devastating attacks to our power grid, financial systems and other vital infrastructure."

She said she hopes the president uses the Senate bill, S. 3414, as a model for executive action.

Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), three leading co-sponsors of the Cybersecurity Act, along with Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), have all called on the White House to issue an executive order. But Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), another key co-sponsor, has said the focus should remain on passing legislation — not executive action.

The Cybersecurity Act would have set voluntary security standards for operators of critical infrastructure, such as gas pipelines and banks. The bill would have also authorized companies and the government to share information about cyber threats.

But Republicans worried the security standards would have burdened businesses and done little to improve security.

Administration officials have confirmed they are working on an executive order that would encourage companies to meet cybersecurity standards. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said earlier this month in a congressional hearing that the order is "close to completion."

Legal experts say the president lacks the authority to tear down the legal barriers that prevent companies and the government from sharing information with each other.

Mikulski said she remains committed to passing legislation to authorize the information-sharing provisions as "soon as possible."

"I believe that information-sharing is critical to better protection of our nation’s intellectual property, secrets and data, which are being pilfered by foreign actors and cybercriminals as we speak," she wrote.

Both parties support information-sharing, but Democrats and the White House argue that a House GOP information-sharing bill lacks adequate privacy protections for people's personal information.