On Thursday, the House voted on and passed two cybersecurity bills.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) (H.R. 3523), sponsored by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and more than a hundred other Congressmen, passed by a vote of 248-168. As previously discussed on this blog, CISPA would facilitate information sharing between private entities and the intelligence community via the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center and would provide liability protection for entities that share cyber threat information. 

Despite a formal statement by the White House threatening a Presidential veto of CISPA in its then-current form, the bill garnered bipartisan support, with 42 Democrats and 206 Republicans voting in favor. Before the final vote, the House adopted several amendments. One of the amendments limits the federal government to using shared cyber threat information for five enumerated purposes: cybersecurity, investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crimes, protection of individuals from death or serious bodily harm, protection of minors from sexual exploitation or physical threat, and protection of national security.

The House also passed by a voice vote the Federal Information Security Amendments Act of 2012 (H.R. 4257), sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). The bill would reform the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 to provide for automated and continuous monitoring of the security of government information systems. FISMA reform is also included in the two cybersecurity bills pending in the Senate, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 (S. 2105), introduced by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), and the SECURE IT Act (S. 2151), introduced by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).