The House has passed the National Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2014, codifying DHS’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center – NCCIC, as the federal civilian information sharing interface to provide shared situational awareness to enable real-time, integrated, and operational actions across the federal government.
The NCCIC also will be charged with sharing cyber threat information among federal, state, and local government entities, information sharing and analysis centers – ISACs, private entities, and critical infrastructure owners and operators that have information sharing relationships, according to a bill summary.
The bill is similar to legislation passed by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in June (The NationalCybersecurity and Communications Integration Center – NCCIC, Act of 2014). With bi-partisan support (the House bill is sponsored by Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Bennie Thompson, D-La.,), it appears poised to move forward.
In addition to requiring the center to facilitate information sharing among a variety of stakeholders, the House bill directs the NCCIC to require other federal civilian agencies to provide NCCIC a variety of reports and information (regarding cyber incidents, threats, and vulnerabilities affecting federal civilian information systems and critical infrastructure systems, cyber incident detection, analysis, mitigation, and response information, and cyber threat information received by such agencies), so new reporting requirements could be in the works.
Under the bill, federal agencies would be required to notify the NCCIC of data breaches involving personally identifiable information within two days, as well as potential victims without unreasonable delay.
It also would require the DHS secretary to establish “cyber incident response teams” to provide technical assistance and recommendations to federal, state, and local government entities, private entities, and critical infrastructure owners and operators.
