WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, today hailed the Committee’s passage of the Cyber Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA). The Committee approved the legislation by a strong bipartisan vote of 14 to 1.

“From Anthem, Sony, and Target to CENTCOM and the Department of State, over the past couple of years we have witnessed a bow-wave of cyber-attacks targeting U.S businesses, government agencies, and individuals. I believe that addressing this threat is one of our most fundamental responsibilities and today’s vote marks a critical step forward in that effort,” said Senator King. “We must remember that this isn’t a fight the government or the private sector can take on alone; cyber-security is a team sport. This bill strengthens our defenses by incentivizing improved information sharing between the government and private sector so that together we can more rapidly identify and respond to cyber-threats. While there is certainly more to be done, it is essential that information sharing be a key element of our overarching cyber-strategy. I urge my colleagues to take up this legislation on the Senate floor without delay.”

The bill authorizes private companies to share cyber threat information with one another and the U.S. government on a purely voluntary basis; authorizes companies to monitor their computer networks and implement defensive measures to counter threats; provides liability protection for the sharing of cyber information for cyber-security purposes; and provides protections to ensure that sharing of cyber information does not allow for privacy intrusions. Specifically, the bill requires companies to remove personally identifiable information from cyber threat information before sharing, and it limits the government’s ability to use the information to ensure the bill is narrowly focused on cyber-security threats. 

Senator King has been a strong and vocal advocate of passing cyber-security legislation. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he supported a previous version of CISA in the 113^th Congress, which passed the Committee with bipartisan support in July 2014, but did not receive a vote on the Senate floor.

In remarks delivered on the Senate floor in January 2015, he further warned about the danger of cyber-attacks and called on Congress to immediately pass meaningful cyber-security legislation. Senator King’s remarks can be watched HERE.

Senator King’s office has spoken with a variety of Maine businesses within the health, defense, financial, education, and consumer products sectors, almost all of which expressed serious concern about cyber-security or had experienced some type of cyber-intrusion. For example, according to the Maine Credit Union League, over the past year data breaches in Maine have cost credit unions around $2 million to replace debit and credit cards and an additional $500,000 for covering fraud. The recent cyber-attack on Anthem Health Insurance may have compromised the data of millions of customers, including many of its 300,000 members in Maine.

A study conducted by McAfee and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates that the annual cost to the global economy from cyber-crime is more than $445 billion, and that economic losses from cyber-crime could translate into more than 200,000 jobs lost in the U.S. alone.

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