Week ahead: Cyber bill inches toward Senate floor

by Cory Bennett and Katie Bo Williams - 10/05/15 6:00 AM ET

Cyber watchers will be keeping a close eye on the Senate as a stalled cybersecurity bill creeps closer to the floor.

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) — intended to bolster the exchange of cyber threat data between companies and the government — has long been on the verge of making it to the upper chamber floor, but been continuously delayed by privacy concerns and party squabbles over procedure.

But now that Congress has cleared the deck of the necessary spending bills to keep the government open, many expect the Senate to turn to cybersecurity.

{mosads}While industry groups and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers argue that CISA is necessary to help better understand and thwart hackers, privacy advocates believe the measure will simply shuttle more of Americans’ sensitive data to the government.

Before the upper chamber departed for its annual August recess, Democrats and Republicans struck a deal to structure debate on the first 22 amendments to be offered on CISA.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had wanted to push the bill through in the waning days before the monthlong break, but ran out of time as both sides clashed over how to limit the amendments.

According to multiple people with knowledge of the talks, Senate staffers have been hammering out agreements on how to handle floor debate for most of the 22 amendments lined up for consideration.

Senate leaders are also trying to minimize debate time by potentially combining several offerings and packaging them with the all-encompassing manager’s amendment from Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Ranking Member Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who are backing the bill.

But a few of the more controversial amendments are still holding up the overall negotiations, several people said.

Regardless, it’s unlikely the bill will see the light of day until at least later in the week. The Senate still has to deal with a defense authorization bill, which is scheduled for a procedural vote on Tuesday.

The House passed its companion bills back in April.

Elsewhere, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday will look at the threat of a North Korean cyberattack and how the U.S. would respond. Earlier this year, the U.S. levied sanctions on the secretive Far East Asian country for conducting the now-infamous Sony Pictures hack.

Cyber specialists see North Korea as a rapidly rising digital threat to the U.S., although nowhere near on par with major cyberspace adversaries like Russia, China and Iran.

Over in the House, a House Homeland Security subcommittee on Thursday will investigate whether the country’s ports would be resilient to a cyberattack. The hearing comes as lawmakers, defense and intelligence leaders, and policy experts debate what constitutes an act of cyber warfare, and whether the U.S. is equipped to defend itself in cyberspace.