From: Politico
By TONY ROMM
President Barack Obama may have forced Capitol Hill’s hand with an executive order on cybersecurity — but it doesn’t mean lawmakers are finished fighting over the country’s digital defenses.
As Obama suggested in his State of the Union address Tuesday, the order still requires Congress to deliver a law that solidifies federal authorities and incentivizes businesses. That’s galvanized lawmakers, but it’s also exposed the very disagreements that prompted the White House to act in the first place.
Both camps of lawmakers, though, expressed some hope this week they can soon notch the sort of win on cybersecurity that’s eluded them for years.
“The president challenged the Congress to demonstrate that we can work in a bipartisan fashion to find a solution to cybersecurity that will actually engage … the public and private sectors,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told POLITICO. He said he has “real hope we will make progress on it this year.”
The president’s new executive order tacks closely to the bill that faltered twice in the Senate in 2012. It advocates for the nation’s critical infrastructure to adopt voluntary security standards while urging agencies to determine whether those best practices should be mandatory. It also facilitates information sharing between the government and businesses.
The order, however, is largely incomplete: Only Congress can set forward the sort of federal authorities that might make the plan work smoothly and fully.
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