Three Republican senators said the White House should scrap its plans to craft an executive order on cybersecurity and let Congress pass legislation instead.
The thoughts came from Sens. John McCain, Saxby Chambliss and Kay Bailey Hutchison and were voiced in an editorial published in the Wall Street Journal.
“Cybersecurity is a priority, but anything less than a strong information-sharing bill, based on policies that enhance national security and the economy, will fall short,” the Republicans said.
They continued that the executive order threatens to impose more mandates and regulations on the private economy instead of addressing the threat at hand.
They said the best way to protect computer systems of key infrastructure is to pass legislation that would allow companies and government agencies to more freely share information about cyberthreats spotted on their networks.
McCain, Chambliss and Hutchison wrote a cybersecurity bill, the “Secure It Act,” that focused on removing legal barriers that hinder companies from sharing cyber threat information with the government.
The bill was a competing measure to Senator Joe Lieberman’s Cybersecurity Act, which Senate Republicans voted down in August.
Rumors have leaked in the past week that the White House is drafting an executive order following many of the same mandates as Lieberman’s bill. It was expected to be shared with the agencies this week and released sometime in the near future.
