HR 2810, NDAA – Cyber Subcommittee Markups

As I mentioned earlier this week the subcommittees of the House Armed Services Committee held a series of markup hearings looking at HR 2810, the FY 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The hearing of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee added Title XVI, Subtitle D – Cyber Related Matters, to the language of HR 2810.

Items in that subtitle include:

§1641—Notification Requirements for Sensitive Military Cyber Operations and Cyber Weapons

§1642—Modification to Quarterly Cyber Operations Briefings

§1643—Cyber Scholarship Program

§1644—Plan to Increase Cyber and Information Operations, Deterrence, and Defense

None of the above sections contain any language that specifically identifies or includes industrial control system (ICS). There are, however, a series of definition changes identified in §1643 that eliminate ‘information technology’, ‘information security’ or ‘IT’ references by substituting ‘cyber’. No definition of the term ‘cyber’ is provided.

Those definitions would be found in 10 USC Chapter 112, Information Security Scholarship Program. There is nothing in the Subcommittee report that would specifically indicate that this was done to add ICS programs to the scholarship program, but it would seem that that would be the major practical consequence of this change.

The full Committee is scheduled to markup HR 2810 on Wednesday.