Safe and Secure Federal Websites Act of 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I think we all agree that Federal agency Web sites must be secure in order to protect taxpayers from being the victims of an information security breach. For that reason, I support the measure before us, the Safe and Secure Federal Websites Act. The recent data breaches at Target, Neiman Marcus, and other retail establishments affected more than 100 million Americans. The importance of information security cannot be overstated.
It is the responsibility of Congress to ensure that the Federal Government is not the source of these types of data breaches and to ensure that the personally identifiable information of American citizens is not compromised through Federal Web sites. This bill would require agency chief information officers to certify to Congress the functionality and security of new or substantially modified Web sites that contain personally identifiable information. It would also require that existing Web sites that contain personally identifiable information meet these security requirements within 90 days.
We are not known for our speed around here, so I am not entirely sure that that will be enough for agencies to secure existing Web sites. I hope, as this bill moves forward in the legislation, the timeliness issue is addressed. However, overall, these requirements are positive, beginning steps in preventing harmful data breaches within the Federal Government.
I also want to take special time to mention and to thank Congressman Connolly from Virginia for his positive contribution to this legislation and for his work on data security issues. Mr. Connolly's amendment to this legislation closes the loopholes in Federal privacy requirements and streamlines Federal oversight of agency implementation of privacy policies and procedures pertaining to agency responses to security incidents involving personally identifiable information.
I join with the gentleman from Virginia in sincerely hoping that we can continue to work together to move this bill forward in a bipartisan manner. I also hope that we can work together to ensure that this bill is compatible with the existing framework of the Federal Security Management Act.
I have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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