Administration excoriated for delay in proposing cyber plan

Sen Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) blasted the Obama administration for holding up passage of cybersecurity legislation that has been subjected to a more than yearlong interagency review process.

"We need input from the executive branch to sort out the differences between the different committees," he said at the Senate Judiciary Committee session. "There's no point in sorting it out if we don't know where the executive branch is going to stand. . . . We're kind of on hold now, waiting." "In the legislative branch we are now probably a year into a stall in preparing the legislation that I think we urgently need in order to protect our country from a cyberattack," Sen Whitehouse added.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at first declined to say when the Administration would finalize its legislative offer. "You're the secretary of Homeland Security -- that's the central agency for cybersecurity other than the [National Security Agency], which provides the technical horses to everybody," Sen Whitehouse responded. "You've gotta have a sense of how close this is." After repeated grilling, Sec Napolitano said: "I think it is fairly close, but I hesitate to give you a deadline because I don't know that there is one. . . . I understand and take your frustration to heart and will take it to the White House, and we will try to generate an answer for you." Without cyber mandates, the administration has used its existing regulatory powers to create agency roles and responsibilities for protecting the nation's digital infrastructure.