Political Quotes

“I rise today to speak on the Federal Information Security Management Reform Act, FISMA Reform, of 2015, which I introduced today with Senator Collins, Senator Mikulski, Senator Coats, Senator Ayotte, and Senator McCaskill. This legislation will give the Department of Homeland Security the power to make sure that civilian government agencies--like OPM--have adequate cyber defenses against these kinds of attacks. Cyberattacks present one of the most critical national and economic threats that this Nation faces. As the FBI Director recently stated, there are two types of companies in the U.S.--those that have been hacked by China, and those that do not yet know they have been hacked. Estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies indicate that cyberattacks and cybercrime account for between $24 and as much as $120 billion in economic and intellectual property loss per year in the U.S. That is the equivalent of .2 to .8 percent of our GDP. The same CSIS study suggests that $100 billion in losses due to cyberattacks is the equivalent of over half a million lost U.S. jobs. As we have seen with the OPM cyberattack, more than 22 million Federal employees, retirees and applicants had their personal data stolen, including--most troublingly--information on their security clearance background investigations. The scope of this breach was unprecedented.…”