House chairman looks for cyber talk in Obama State of the Union

The House Homeland Security Chairman expects President Obama to address the nation’s cybersecurity policy during his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday evening.

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“I do think he is going to reference it and come up with a national strategy for cybersecurity that we’ve been calling for for many years,” Rep. Michael Michael (R-Texas) told The Hill on Tuesday.

The issue has come up in several of Obama’s previous addresses, most notably last year when he made an urgent plea for action.

“If we don’t act, we’ll leave our nation and our economy vulnerable,” Obama said. “If we do, we can continue to protect the technologies that have unleashed untold opportunities for people around the globe.”

Since then, Congress has passed a significant piece of cybersecurity legislation, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. Now signed into law, the legislation is intended to promote cyber threat sharing between the government and private industry.

Now, many lawmakers are clamoring for the codification of a more holistic national cybersecurity strategy. Critics say the administration hasn’t drawn a clear distinction between different kinds of cyberattacks — what constitutes an act of cyber warfare versus a cybercrime, for example.

Many believe absent an international set of norms guided by the U.S., there is no way to know what the appropriate response to a given action in cyberspace is.

Reps. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) and Jim Himes (D-Conn), the chair and ranking member of the House Subcommittee on the National Security Agency, recently sent a letter to the State Department calling for “a Geneva Conventions” in cyberspace.

They say the agency must create a “plan of action” for how Secretary of State John Kerry will work to develop international cyberspace norms

McCaul has warned before that a lack of global cyberspace rules poses serious dangers, noting in December that “there are no rules of the game.”

“My side of the aisle, we’re very critical of the president, but that’s one area where we’ll applaud him and commend him for doing that,” he said Tuesday.

He expressed encouragement that Obama is elevating the issue’s profile.

“I’m glad he’s just bringing it up at all because it’s an important issue and a lot of people don’t care about it,” McCaul said.