By Joseph Lieberman, (I-Conn) U.S. Senate

Congress has recessed until after the November elections without passing cybersecurity legislation, which a bipartisan chorus of prominent defense and intelligence officials says is urgently needed to protect our country’s economic and national security.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper delivered an unvarnished assessment of the threat from cyberattacks when he told Congress in February: “We all recognize [cyberattacks] as a profound threat to this country, to its future, to its economy, to its very being.”

And yet, our cyberdefenses are “woefully lacking,” former national intelligence director Michael McConnell has said. That’s why Sens. Susan Collins, Jay Rockefeller, Dianne Feinstein, Tom Carper and I introduced the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 — to require a minimum level of security for the most critical privately owned cybernetworks, which will be prime targets for attack. But even this was considered “burdensome, job-killing, government regulation” by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its allies in the Senate.

Read more.

Source: The Washington Post