Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) on Thursday introduced bipartisan legislation to bolster the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) role in protecting U.S. critical infrastructure, particularly industrial control systems.
The DHS Industrial Control Systems Enhancement Act of 2021 would solidify CISA’s lead role in protecting critical infrastructure and amend the Homeland Security Act to require the agency to maintain capabilities to detect and mitigate threats and vulnerabilities to industrial control systems.
Industrial control systems are increasingly connected to the internet and allow hackers to manipulate the systems, potentially with tragic results.
The bill also requires CISA to maintain cross-sector incident response capabilities, provide technical assistance to stakeholders, and collect, coordinate and provide vulnerability information about industrial control systems to stakeholders.
“As I have said consistently, we need to continue to build centralized cyber security capacity with CISA where possible for the entire critical infrastructure community to voluntarily benefit from,” Katko, ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement. He said the bill “will solidify CISA’s lead role in protecting our nation’s critical infrastructure from cyber threats, particularly to our industrial control systems.”