Morella pushes security bill again

Computer Security Enhancement Act of 2001

Rep. Connie Morella (R-Md.) reintroduced a bill last week to make what many federal experts call much-needed updates to the 1987 Computer Security Act.

The Computer Security Enhancement Act of 2001 (H.R. 1259) is the third version of a bill that Morella and others have introduced since 1997. The last one passed the House in October 2000 but did not have time to get through the Senate before the congressional session ended.

Under the Computer Security Act, the National Institute of Standards and Technology is responsible for guiding and assisting civilian agencies' efforts to secure their systems and programs.

However, the law does not require civilian agencies to follow the NIST guidance. Federal security experts at NIST, the National Security Agency, the General Accounting Office and others told Morella at a hearing last year that such a requirement is the key to improving the overall level of, security in the federal government.

Following this advice, the new bill would provide NIST the ability to enforce its guidance. NIST's role would include:

Emphasizing the development of technology-neutral policy guidelines for computer security and electronic authentication practices. Promoting the use of commercially available security products that have been tested by federally accredited laboratories. Developing qualitative and quantitative measures to assess the quality of information security and privacy programs at federal agencies. Evaluating agencies' existing information security and privacy programs. The bill also includes a requirement for NIST to submit an annual report to Congress on the findings of the agency security evaluations. In addition, the Government Information Security Reform Act, signed in October as part of the fiscal 2001 Defense Authorization Act, requires agencies to perform annual security self-assessments and requires agency inspectors general to perform annual independent security assessments.

Findings from both of these evaluations are to be reported to the Office of Management and Budget, which will compile them into a governmentwide report to Congress.