Bipartisan Senate bill takes aim at ‘overly burdensome’ cybersecurity regs

The Streamlining Federal Cybersecurity Regulations Act would establish an interagency committee to recommend which cyber regulations to lessen or waive.

New legislation from a bipartisan pair of senators would create an interagency committee tasked with streamlining the country’s patchwork system of cybersecurity regulations if signed into law.

The Streamlining Federal Cybersecurity Regulations Act from Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and James Lankford, R-Okla., calls on the White House’s national cyber director to create a committee that would harmonize the myriad cyber requirements imposed on companies by federal regulatory agencies, according to bill text shared with CyberScoop.

The introduction of the bill comes a month after a Senate hearing in which Nicholas Leiserson, the assistant national cyber director for cyber policy and programs, warned lawmakers of increasing “fragmentation” of cybersecurity regulations. “It is a problem that requires leadership from ONCD and Congress informed by the private sector,” he said.

Peters and Lankford both acknowledged the problem during the hearing, with the Michigan Democrat teasing the bill’s release — a draft copy of which was previously obtained by The Record — and the Oklahoma Republican railing against rulemaking from independent agencies.

“There are independent agencies that feel like they’re independent from everybody. They’re not independent from everybody,” Lankford said at the time. “There’s still some boundaries that need to be there when they’re creating new regs, that they’re not a completely independent fourth branch of government.”

The lawmakers’ bill addresses many of the concerns raised during June’s hearing. The committee would be responsible for identifying “overly burdensome, inconsistent, or contradictory” cybersecurity requirements and recommending updates to them, while establishing minimum standards and reciprocity among agencies. 

The committee would include the national cyber director, the chief of the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the heads of each federal regulatory agency and other government leaders  determined by the chair. 

Other elements of the bill include a pilot program to implement the new framework after consulting with various sector risk management agencies and an annual report on the committee’s work to the Senate Homeland Security and House Oversight and Accountability committees, among others with relevant jurisdiction.

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

Technology

• European parliament members call for slowdown of Serbia’s EU entry over spyware use

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Threats

• Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure

• Election official says Tina Peters would be consultant, won’t have access to election systems