A House panel advanced legislation Wednesday that would reauthorize a major cyber threat information sharing law and a big-dollar state and local cyber grant program before they’re set to expire at the end of this month.

Trump administration officials and nominees, as well as cybersecurity organizations and experts, have voiced support for renewing them both as they near their respective lapses. Expiration of the information sharing law in particular has led industry groups and others to warn about dangerous ramifications about the collapse of cyber threat data exchanges.

At the House Homeland Security Committee markup, the panel also approved bills addressing pipeline cybersecurity and terrorists’ use of generative artificial intelligence.

The 2015 Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Act has provided legal protections to the private sector to share threat data with the federal government and between companies and organizations. The Widespread Information Management for the Welfare of Infrastructure and Government Act, which the panel approved 25-0, would reauthorize it for another 10 years, with updates.

“Reauthorizing this law and ensuring the relevance of this framework before it expires is essential for retaining our cyber resilience,” said Rep. Andrew Garbarino, N.Y., the chair of the committee and lead sponsor of the re-up legislation. The original legislation, he said, “changed the cybersecurity landscape forever, and for the better.”

The bill encourages the use of secure AI to improve technical capabilities, updates legal definitions to capture newer hacking tactics and seeks to preserve and strengthen existing privacy protections, he said.

The top Democrat on the committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said the committee should have approved a simpler reauthorization to give lawmakers and affected parties more time to take a look at the legislation’s changes to the 2015 law, but he supported moving the bill forward.

Garbarino said he had a good conversation Tuesday evening with his Senate counterpart, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., about the path forward on the legislation.

Paul and other GOP lawmakers have said they want renewal of the 2015 law to include language prohibiting the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — which plays a large role in carrying out the law — from censoring speech, despite past responses from agency officials that they have not censored anyone. Garbarino’s bill doesn’t contain any provisions about that.

The panel voted 22-1 to approve the Protecting Information by Local Leaders for Agency Resilience Act, which would extend the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program for another 10 years. The program has doled out $1 billion.

“Many local governments have a long way to go to be prepared for cyberattacks from adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn. He said that while “I usually want Washington to do less,” the federal government might have to foot the bill later anyway if it doesn’t help state and local governments shore up their defenses.

It would provide 60% of funds to state, local and tribal governments that are eligible, or 70% for those applying together. It would direct a federal outreach effort to smaller communities, and stress defense for both information technology and operational technology, Ogles said. Appropriators would still need to dedicate funding to the program, even if President Donald Trump signs it into law.

A coalition of tech and cybersecurity groups wrote to congressional leaders Tuesday urging them to extend the program, listing examples of how the grant program has defended against specific cyberattacks across the nation. “Without continued funding, hard-won progress will stall, and communities across the country will be left vulnerable — handing our adversaries a dangerous advantage,” their letter reads.

Paul hasn’t publicly indicated his plans for the expiring grant program. The two bills would provide new names for the things they are authorizing: WIMWIG replacing 2015 CISA, and PILLAR replacing the grant program.

The House Homeland Security Committee also voted 21-0 to advance the Generative AI Terrorism Risk Assessment Act, which would require the Department of Homeland Security to conduct annual assessments on how terrorist groups use artificial intelligence to carry out terrorist activity, such as seeking to radicalize potential recruits.

“Known terrorist organizations like ISIS or Al Qaeda or others have gone so far as to have AI workshops to train members on its use,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas.

And the committee voted 22-0 to approve the Pipeline Security Act that would codify the Transportation Security Administration’s pipeline security office into law and specify its responsibilities, including on cybersecurity. TSA wrote cybersecurity regulations in response to the 2021 Colonial Pipeline hack.

“We don’t just risk our national security, we risk supply chain disruptions that will create a ripple effect throughout our communities” if we fail to protect our pipelines, said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Texas.

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President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency told senators Thursday that he would prioritize evicting China from the U.S. supply chain, and wouldn’t hesitate to ask for more money for the shrunken agency if he thought it needed it.

“If confirmed it will be a priority of mine to remove all Chinese intrusions, exploitations or infestation into the American supply chain,” Sean Plankey told Rick Scott, R-Fla., at his confirmation hearing before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Scott had asked Plankey about reports of Chinese infiltration of U.S. energy infrastructure.

Should he be confirmed for the role, Plankey is set to arrive at an agency that has had its personnel and budget slashed significantly under Trump, a topic of concern for Democratic senators including the ranking member on the panel vetting him, Gary Peters of Michigan. Peters asked how he’d handle the smaller CISA he’s inherited while still having a range of legal obligations to fulfill.

“One of the ways I’ve found most effective when you come in to lead an organization is to allow the operators to operate,” Plankey said. “If that means we have to reorganize in some form or fashion, that’s what we’ll do, I’ll lead that charge. If that means we need a different level of funding than we currently have now, then I will approach [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem], ask for that funding, ask for that support.”

Under questioning from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., about whether he believed the 2020 election was rigged or stolen, Plankey, like other past Trump nominees, avoided answering “yes” or “no.” 

At first he said he hadn’t reviewed any cybersecurity around the 2020 election. He then said, “My opinion on the election as an American private citizen probably isn’t relevant, but the Electoral College did confirm President Joe Biden.” 

Blumenthal pressed him, saying his office was supposed to be above politics, and asked what Plankey would do if Trump came to him and falsely told him the 2026 or 2028 elections were rigged. 

“That’s like a doctor who’s diagnosing someone over the television because they saw them on the news,” Plankey answered.

Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., rebutted Blumenthal, saying “CISA has nothing to do with the elections.” But Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., later asked Plankey about CISA’s “important” role in protecting election infrastructure, and asked how he would make the line “clear” between past CISA disinformation work that Republicans have called censorship and cybersecurity protections.

Plankey answered that Trump has issued guidance on the protection of election security infrastructure like electronic voting machines, and it’s DHS’s job “to ensure that it is assessed prior to an election to make sure there are no adversarial actions or vulnerabilities in it,” something he’d focus on if Noem tasked CISA with the job.

Plankey said he would not engage in censorship — something his predecessors staunchly denied doing — because “cybersecurity is a big enough problem.” His focus would be on defending federal networks and critical infrastructure, he said. To improve federal cybersecurity, he said he favored “wholesale” revamps of federal IT rather than smaller fixes.

The Center for Democracy and Technology said after Plankey’s hearing it was concerned about how CISA would approach election security.

“CISA has refused to say what its plans are for the next election, and election officials across the country are flying blind,” said Tim Harper, senior policy analyst on elections and democracy for the group. “If CISA is abandoning them, election officials deserve to know so they can make plans to protect their cyber and physical infrastructure from nation-state hackers. Keeping them in the dark only helps bad actors.”

Plankey indicated support for the expiring State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program, as well as the expiring 2015 Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Act, both of which are due to sunset in September.

Paul told reporters after the hearing that he planned to have a markup of a renewal of the 2015 information sharing law before the September deadline, with language added to explicitly prohibit the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from any censorship.

Plankey’s nomination next moves to a committee vote, following an 11-1 vote last month to advance the nomination of Sean Cairncross to become national cyber director. Plankey’s nomination would have another hurdle to overcome before a Senate floor vote, as Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has placed a hold on the Plankey pick in a bid to force the administration to release an unclassified report on U.S. phone network security.

“The Trump administration might not have been paying attention, so I’ll say it again: I will not lift my hold on Mr. Plankey’s nomination until this report is public. It’s ridiculous that CISA seems more concerned with covering up phone companies’ negligent cybersecurity than it is with protecting Americans from Chinese hackers,” Wyden said in a statement to CyberScoop. “Trump’s administration won’t act to shore up our dangerously insecure telecom system, it hasn’t gotten to the bottom of the Salt Typhoon hack, and it won’t even let Americans see an unclassified report on why it’s so important to put mandatory security rules in place for phone companies.”

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Data from sensors that detect threats in critical infrastructure networks is sitting unanalyzed after a government contract expired this weekend, raising risks for operational technology, a program leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told lawmakers Tuesday.

That news arrived at a hearing of a House Homeland Security subcommittee on Stuxnet, the malware that was discovered 15 years ago after it afflicted Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. The hearing focused on operational technology (OT), used to monitor and control physical processes in things like manufacturing or energy plants.

Amid a Department of Homeland Security review of contracts, the arrangement between the laboratory and DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to support the CyberSentry program expired Sunday, the laboratory program manager Nathaniel Gleason told lawmakers under questioning Tuesday. An agency official told CyberScoop later Tuesday that the program is still operational.

CyberSentry is a voluntary program for critical infrastructure owners and operators to monitor threats in both their IT and OT networks.

“We’re looking for threats that haven’t been seen before,” Gleason told California Rep. Eric Swalwell, the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection. “We’re looking for threats that exist right now in our infrastructure. One of the great things about the CyberSentry program is that it takes the research and marries it with what is actually happening on the real networks. So we’re not just doing science projects. We’re deploying that technology out in the real world, detecting real threats.”

But the lab can’t legally analyze the data from the CyberSentry sensors without funding from government agencies, and funding agreements were still making their way through DHS processes before the contract expired this weekend, he said.

“One of the most important things is getting visibility into what’s happening on our OT networks,” Gleason said. “We don’t have enough of that. So losing this visibility through this program is a significant loss.”

Spokespeople for the lab did not immediately provide further details on the size or length of the contract. Other threat hunting contracts have also expired under the Trump administration. 

Chris Butera, CISA’s acting executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said in a statement to CyberScoop that the “CyberSentry program remains fully operational.”

“Through this program, CISA gains deeper insight into network activity of CyberSentry partners, which in turn helps us to disseminate actionable threat information that critical infrastructure owners and operators use to strengthen the security of their networks and to safeguard American interests, people, and our way of life,” Butera said. “CISA routinely reviews all agreements and contracts that support its programs in order to ensure mission alignment and responsible investment of taxpayer dollars. CISA’s ongoing review of its agreement with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has not impacted day-to-day operations of CyberSentry and we look forward to a continued partnership.”

Tatyana Bolton, executive director of the Operational Technology Cyber Coalition, told the subcommittee there aren’t enough federal OT cybersecurity resources in general.

“We must better resource OT security,” Bolton said. “From addressing the growing tech debt,  hiring cybersecurity experts, to procuring and building updated systems, OT owners and operators don’t have the necessary funding to defend their networks.”

Those owners and operators spend 99 cents of every dollar on physical security and 1 cent on cybersecurity, she said. Reauthorizing the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program, due to expire in September, would help with that, Bolton said.

The Trump administration has made large cuts in CISA’s budget since the president took office in January.

This story was updated July 22 with comments from CISA’s Chris Butera.

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