Industry groups were concerned the law would lapse again amid hacks into water systems and recent advancements in AI.
Congress is kicking the can down the road again on a long term debate over reauthorizing the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015.
The continuing resolution passed by the House on Tuesday would extend CISA 2015 through the stopgap funding period into early December. The Senate has already passed the measure, meaning it now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk.
There has been a persistent chorus of voices in industry calling on Congress to find a long-term solution to re-authorizing CISA 2015. Those calls have only grown louder amid advancements in artificial intelligence models and recent cyber attacks on critical infrastructure.
The 2015 law provides privacy and liability protections to encourage companies to share data about cyber vulnerabilities and threats with government and each other. The information sharing law briefly lapsed during last fall’s shutdown and again earlier this year before being extended through Sept. 30.
Groups continue to call on lawmakers to advance a long-term reauthorization bill. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been a roadblock to otherwise bipartisan efforts, as he seeks to address free speech concerns as part of the reauthorization.
In late July, the Operational Technology Cybersecurity Coalition issued a statement highlighting CISA 2015 reauthorization following cyber attacks on water and wastewater systems across multiple states.
“This information allows the U.S. government to identify widespread, large scale cyber campaigns and trends across sectors,” OTCC Executive Director Tatyana Bolton said in the July 31 statement. “It also enables [the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] and the FBI to warn other potential victims before they are potentially impacted.”
“We can no longer keep doing minor extensions of CISA 2015,” Bolton added. “We must have long-term authority to keep CISA 2015 operational to further enable the foundation of public-private partnership that allows us to operationalize actionable, timely, and relevant information.”
Still, the short-term extension will come as a relief to organizations worried about another lapse.
In a July letter to House leaders advocating for an extension to be included in the CR, multiple industry associations highlighted how close collaboration between government and industry is needed to tackle the cybersecurity risks of quickly evolving AI systems.
The groups tied the success of the Treasury Department’s new AI cybersecurity clearinghouse, called “Gold Eagle,” to the CISA 2015 authorities.
“A lapse now would be especially ill-timed – undermining not just longstanding information-sharing practices but also the GOLD EAGLE Initiative, a new clearinghouse that pairs industry and critical infrastructure operators with government agencies to rapidly detect and patch vulnerabilities,” the associations wrote. “The administration has made clear that GOLD EAGLE depends on the protections CISA 2015 provides, and that the program is fundamentally at risk if CISA 2015 is not extended.”
In addition to CISA 2015, the stopgap funding bill also extends the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act and the Technology Modernization Fund through December.
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