October 22, 2021
In a letter to David Pekoske, five Republican politicians in the US Senate criticized Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas new cybersecurity regulations, which aim to protect US rail and airport systems by drawing up response plans.
The senators, including Roger Wicker, John Thune, Cynthia Lummis, Todd Young and Deb Fischer, questioned the rules on whether they were “appropriate absent an immediate threat.”
According to the letter, the “prescriptive requirements” put in place by the TSA “may be out of step with current practices and may limit affected industries’ ability to respond to evolving threats, thereby lessening security” They further claimed that the rules will impose “unnecessary operation delays at a time of unprecedented congestion in the nation’s supply chain.”
Senators urged Pekoske to “reconsider” the rules, which say that “the very importance of effective cybersecurity for critical infrastructures, such as the rail, rail transit, and aviation systems, counsels against acting rashly in the absence of a genuine emergency.”
Instead, the senators called for “performance standards that set goals for cybersecurity while enabling businesses to meet those goals.”
For more information, read the original story in ZDNet.
