Cybersecurity Privacy Issues: Congressional Bills and Data Protection

This report examines the critical issue of privacy in the modern digital landscape, focusing on cybersecurity and the protection of individual data. It highlights the increasing challenges posed by cyberattacks and the lack of public awareness. The report provides an overview of US privacy laws, including the US Privacy Act of 1974, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 2000. It then delves into the congressional bills passed in 2014, analyzing their impact on cybersecurity, particularly in relation to corporate privacy breaches and data sharing between private firms and the government. The report discusses specific bills like S.2519, S.2521, and S.1353, which focus on centralizing government efforts and establishing cybersecurity standards, and H.R. 2592 and S.1691, which address workforce empowerment. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of these laws in safeguarding consumer data, ensuring companies design robust architectures to mitigate privacy risks, and providing a legal framework to restrict unauthorized access to private information.

Cyber-Security
PRIVACY ISSUES

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Privacy in today’s world
Privacy is a major concern in today’s world. It is not only critical for the management of the
computer networks to prevent the data but also safeguard basic laws of the people related to
privacy. This has become a greater challenge because of the numbers of attacks that are going
on in different parts of the world and at the lack of knowledge of the people (Green, 2020).
Corporate privacy breach can lead to huge failures for the companies especially in terms of
the fact that many important data gets lost in the process and can go into the hands of the
competitors which reduces their power to gain competitive advantage over the rivals. The
same is the case with individuals. In this assignment the congressional bill dealing with
privacy issues will be discussed.
Unlike EU has GDPR as the privacy law that ensures data protection in a better manner.
Consumer-oriented privacy laws are still in a state of bills. There are four privacy laws that
act as protecting the data in U.S. namely “US privacy act 1974”, “Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
1999”, “Health Insurance portability and accountability act 1996” and “Children’s online
privacy protection act 2000”. In the year 2014, congressional passed five bills related to
cyber-security (Skeath, 2014). Sadly, none of these bills addressed greater concerns that deal
with more combative cybersecurity challenges like private firm’s immunity that shares threat
related to cybersecurity information with the federal government. Bills focus on smaller
cyber-security challenges along with the procedures and structures of the federal agencies
which overlook cybersecurity. S.2519 and S.2521 are the two majors that are majorly tilted
towards centralising the government’s efforts related to cybersecurity and improving sharing
of information with the companies from private sector. Third in a row is S.1353 that gives the
power to create voluntary set of cybersecurity standards for the private sector. All these three
bills help in strengthening the efforts of the government towards the corporate privacy. The
other two bills H.R. 2592 and S.1691 concentrate on empowering Homeland Security’s
recruitment efforts and the workforce (Singh, 2020).
National Cybersecurity Protection Act of 2014 provides National Cybersecurity and
Communications Integration Centre a power to give a platform to government and the private
sector to share information related to technical assistance, incident response and cyber
security threats. Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014 addresses about the standards and
best practices that can protect cybersecurity of people. In management of data of an

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individual these acts ensures that companies does not over-utilise the customer’s information
and hence protecting the individual’s rights. These laws also ensures that company design a
robust architecture where companies have access to the risk profile and hence they can design
their platforms so that risks related to the privacy of consumers data can be reduced. The
federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act provides the legal infrastructure where different types
of private information of the people is maintained especially in terms of restricting
unauthorised access to the private data of the individuals (ICLG, 2020).

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References
Green, A. 2020. Complete Guide to Privacy Laws in the US. Retrieved From:
https://www.varonis.com/blog/us-privacy-laws/
ICLG, 2020. USA: Cybersecurity 2020. Retrieved From:
https://iclg.com/practice-areas/cybersecurity-laws-and-regulations/usa
Singh, H. 2020. A Glance at the United States Cyber Security Laws. Retrieved From:
https://www.appknox.com/blog/united-states-cyber-security-laws
Skeath, C. 2014. Congress Passes Five Cybersecurity Bills. Retrieved From:
https://www.insideprivacy.com/united-states/congress-passes-four-cybersecurity-bills/