New House Homeland Security ranking member Mike Rogers (R-AL) sees improving the cybersecurity workforce and addressing election security as top priorities for the committee, while adding in an exclusive interview that neither Congress nor the executive branch have “been able to get ahead of” evolving cyber threats.
And, Rogers told Inside Cybersecurity on Thursday, he and new Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) have agreed they will focus only on cyber-related bills that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is interested in passing, and will meet soon with Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) and ranking member Gary Peters (D-MI) to discuss what their priorities are.
“We don’t want to spend a lot of time moving legislation out of the House that is just going to go sit on the Senate side and never be taken up,” Rogers said. “By meeting with our counterparts on the Senate side, we can find out what they are amenable to, what they are interested in, and in what can we move that they care about over here. If we find out that there are some areas where they are just saying, listen, you all can do what you want to, but we won’t take it up, then I don’t want to spend a lot of time on that, and neither does Bennie. So that’s going to be a new approach that hasn’t been taken in the past, and I hope that that will be beneficial.”
On specific issues, Rogers said, “I’m really interested in us recognizing as a committee that we have a deficiency of cyber workforce people that are qualified to work in this industry, not just the private sector but the public sector as well, and what we can do to try to address that as a committee. That is going to be one priority we’ve got to recognize.”
Rogers said “evolving” cyber threats pose another issue for the Homeland Security Committee, along with the threat posed by nation-states to U.S. election security, a comment that came on the heels of a full-committee hearing on the subject earlier this month.
“Election security is going to have to be something that we have to look at, even though there was no evidence of any tampering with elections,” Rogers said. “We know there are people that want to, and we have to start to make sure that we are thinking around the corner to be prepared when some bad actor, whether it’s a state actor like North Korea or China, or just some thug that just wants to be in the mischief starts trying to tamper with our elections, that we are prepared to make sure they’re not able to do that successfully.”
Rogers emphasized the changing nature of the cyber threat, saying that he felt neither former President Obama nor President Trump had been able to fully address it up to this point.
“It’s still such a rapidly evolving threat that I don’t think the Obama administration was able to catch up with it, I don’t think the Trump administration has been able to get ahead of it, and I don’t know what it’s going to take,” Rogers said. “It’s one of the reasons that I am so anxious to have testimony and be able to ask them questions to get a better feel of whether this organizational change that the Trump administration has made in DHS is getting the job done right, but my feeling is on both the House side and DHS side that we are not ahead of the curve on this.”
The organizational change was the creation of DHS’ new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, led by Director Christopher Krebs, who recently testified before the committee on election security issues. Rogers said he was “impressed” with Krebs, but stopped short of passing judgment on CISA’s accomplishments since its formal creation late last year, commenting that “it’s too early for me to say how they’re doing, I don’t know yet.”
Rogers added that “I’m hopeful we’ll have a hearing pretty soon, have a fuller perspective [on CISA]…since this is an organizational change, was it a good organizational change?”
Another area Rogers wants the committee to address is securing critical infrastructure against attacks. The House Homeland Security subcommittees on cybersecurity, infrastructure protection, and innovation and on transportation and maritime security held a hearing this week to examine ways to mitigate cyber attacks against railroads and pipelines. Rogers said that while he doesn’t see the need for any specific legislation to increase regulations around this topic, “vigorous oversight” is called for.
The relevant agencies “have to know that we are vigorously holding their feet to the fire and expecting them to let us know that they’ve already thought about these things, that they’ve got initiatives in place to be effective because somebody’s going to think of those things,” Rogers said. “Pipelines in particular is one area where I’m amazed we haven’t had problems, and it doesn’t have to be pipelines that carry things like oil, it could be things like water. People don’t realize how vulnerable we could be if some bad actor wanted to start tampering with our water supply.”
Overall, Rogers said he wants to have “as much interaction” with DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen “as possible,” a comment coming on the heels of a bumpy start between Chairman Thompson and Nielsen and ahead of a committee hearing next week on border security, with Nielsen scheduled to testify.
“I have made it clear to the administration, I want to have as much interaction with the Secretary, me and Bennie both, as possible, formal hearings, but also informally, and that is one of things I am going to encourage her to work with us on going forward,” Rogers said. “There is no down side to us having an open dialogue where we are regularly talking with her about what is going on in the Department.”
Rogers, who has served in the House since 2003, took over the top Republican position on the committee in January after former Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) termed out of the position, with former ranking member Thompson taking over the chairmanship.
One major piece of cyber-related legislation that both the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees are looking to push through is a long-term reauthorization of DHS’ Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program, which is meant to secure high-risk chemical facilities against threats including those stemming from malicious cyber actors. The House Homeland Security Committee held a hearing on the topic earlier this week, with Rogers telling Inside Cybersecurity that he does not see the need to expand any of the cybersecurity language in the bill, echoing earlier comments made by Johnson.
“[CFATS] seems to be adequate,” Rogers said. “I was talking with a chemical company owner this morning, and same thing, he felt that CFATS is a really good program, it needs to be reauthorized, and his point was that there are still some companies that aren’t compliant that need to be pushed to be more compliant, but everything I’ve learned about CFATS is that it’s in a pretty good place, we just need to be responsible about reauthorizing it.”
Rogers has been a member of the House Homeland Security Committee since it was elevated to a permanent standing committee in 2005. He is also currently a member of the House Armed Services Committee, where he serves on the readiness subcommittee, which oversees military training, logistics, and maintenance issues, along with energy security, and on the strategic forces subcommittee, which oversees Department of Energy national security programs, among other issues.
Prior to serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rogers served three terms as a member of the Alabama House of Representatives from 1994 until being elected to the U.S. Congress. Rogers was also previously a practicing attorney and small business owner in Calhoun County, AL. Rogers holds both a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Masters of Public Administration from Jacksonville State University, and a degree from the Birmingham School of Law. -- Maggie Miller (mmiller@iwpnews.com)