Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Floor Speech

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Mr. CLYDE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to continue to recognize the month of October as Cybersecurity Awareness Month and to further highlight the importance of cybersecurity across our country.

Our Nation's safety and security are being challenged by enemies through cyberspace. As we have seen over the last year, these attacks can lie dormant for many months before being detected and can have devastating impacts on our economy and way of life. Furthermore, these cyberattacks can be carried out by both state and nonstate actors with ease, as they are relatively inexpensive to execute.

There are certainly effective ways to immediately respond to a cyberattack, yet victims are often constrained due to lack of capabilities, knowledge, or resources.

In many ways cyberattacks have emerged as a near-perfect weapon against our Nation. During these last 10 months in Congress, I have become aware of just how destructive a cyberattack can be on a small business. It makes no difference what the business does. The only concern of the thieves is that the business be vulnerable. That is what happened to a company in my district in rural north Georgia 3 years ago.

The operations of a company that manufactured various bathroom fixtures came to a screeching halt when it was hijacked by a ransomware attack. This business was then forced to send a $100,000 ransom using cryptocurrency, bitcoin, to obtain the decryption key that would allow them to resume functioning. For almost 5 weeks their operations were shut down by the attack.

When I spoke to the business management team, they told me the attack happened so quickly that they were not sure what to do or to whom to turn. In the end, this business suffered a loss of over $1 million in hard currency--money that had to be paid out to fix or replace equipment and almost $10 million in lost revenue.

Any American or business can face the same horrifying reality. That is why it takes all of us to prevent these intrusions from occurring. It starts with fundamental cybersecurity practices that work to strengthen network resiliency; commonly known as good cyber hygiene.

The Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, spearheads efforts to educate Americans on what steps they can take to practice proper cyber hygiene.

I fully support CISA's efforts in this endeavor and encourage everyone, especially businesses, to take a look at the resources CISA has to offer to be more safe and more secure online. Madam Speaker, you can find them online at www.CISA.gov. Biden Border Crisis

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Mr. CLYDE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to highlight the ongoing and record-breaking Biden border crisis. Hidden in last Friday's news dump, the latest data from Customs and Border Protection reveals Biden's self-inflicted crisis at our southern border is far from over. Last month there were 192,000 encounters at our southern border alone--a 232 percent increase from September of last year. This is the seventh straight month of more than 170,000 illegal encounters--a trend never before recorded.

This insanity must stop. The chaos at our southern border has now recklessly reached over 1.4 million illegal border crossings since President Biden took office. Yet during the President's townhall last week, he claimed that he hasn't had time to visit the crisis that he created. Keep in mind, Madam Speaker, the President has managed to visit his Delaware beach house almost every weekend of his Presidency.

It is shameful, Madam Speaker, that the President doesn't feel the need to witness the very crisis that he created. I refuse to ignore this administration's blatant dereliction of duty. The country needs to continue to hear about it until the issue is fixed, and I will continue working with my Republican colleagues to strengthen border security and put Americans first.

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