Strengthening our cybersecurity and protecting our privacy

Earlier this week, I took to the Senate floor to talk about why CISA is so important. Every day, foreign governments, hackers, and other bad actors are trying to break into our critical networks. And they’re not only targeting our government networks. They’re also targeting business large and small in Delaware and across the country to steal our ideas, research, and innovations – the intellectual seeds that grow our economy. And as many of us know all too well, they’re targeting our most sensitive, personal information, as well.
 
Over the past four years, as ranking member and former chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I’ve been working with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, the Administration, academia, industry, and others to develop cybersecurity legislation that would help us stay ahead of the growing threat we face online. Last Congress, we made important progress on this front – but cyber threats continue to evolve, and more must be done. After years of bipartisan communication, collaboration, and compromise, a significant majority of the Senate came together in support of CISA to move our nation ahead of the threat and bolster our defenses in cyberspace.
 
Over the years of working on this legislation, 

I have heard that we need to choose between strong cyber security defenses and 

protection of our personal privacy. I believe this is a false choice – and I believe that CISA is proof of that. This bill strikes a delicate balance between protecting privacy and ensuring that the private sector and federal government can share critical cyber threat data with one another. I worked tirelessly to add a provision to the bill that would enable the Department of Homeland Security, a civilian agency better equipped than others to properly handle sensitive personal information, to wipe away the cyber threat information it receives before it’s shared with other agencies or businesses. This provision will ensure that Americans’ personal and private details are protected. In addition, another provision in the bill that I authored would enhance cybersecurity defenses across the federal government by implementing stronger protections and state-of-the-art technologies that will better defend agencies against cyberattacks.