White House praises Senate for passing bipartisan cyber bill

The White House on Wednesday praised the Senate for passing long-stalled cybersecurity legislation and urged lawmakers to move swiftly through the conference process.

{mosads}”The Senate’s passage with strong bipartisan support is notable and worth mentioning,” spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters aboard Air Force One.

“We are hopeful the Senate and the House can work together expeditiously to send the best possible bill to the president’s desk as soon as possible.”

The White House last week gave its public support to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which overwhelmingly passed the Senate, 74-21, on Tuesday.

The bill aims to increase the exchange of hacking data between the government and private sector by giving liability protections to companies that share data with certain federal agencies.

White House support came with some reservations, however. The administration’s chief concern was that lawmakers would approve exceptions to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data-sharing portal.

The administration had also expressed concerns with the House-passed version of the legislation this spring, specifically that liability protections for companies might go too far.

“Appropriate liability protections should incentivize good cybersecurity practices and should not grant immunity to a private company for failing to act on information it receives about the security of its networks,” the White House said in April.

Schultz expressed satisfaction that its concerns had been mitigated in the Senate offering, thanking bill architects for crafting legislation that adhered to principles supported by the administration.

In January, the White House offered its own legislative cyber information-sharing proposal that would funnel all cyber information sharing through DHS.

“The president … proposed legislation to facilitate greater information sharing by providing for targeted liability protection while carefully safeguarding privacy, confidentiality and civil liberties, all the while preserving the longstanding respective roles and the missions of civilian and intelligence agencies,” Schultz said Wednesday.

Schultz then thanked Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the measure’s co-sponsors, as well as Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), who was responsible for a number of provisions codifying DHS’s responsibilities under the bill.

“This was an important step for better protecting the nation’s networks from malicious cyber actors,” Schultz said.

Lawmakers will now work to combine the bill with the two companion pieces of House legislation. Burr told reporters Tuesday that the two chambers likely wouldn’t resolve their differences before the new year.

Jordan Fabian contributed.