Washington is moving to address cybersecurity threats, but some say not as aggressively as it should.

The House Committee on Homeland Security unanimously approved in early February H.R. 3696, the National Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2013, and leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee said in early May that they would introduce a modest bill that would grant antitrust immunity to firms that share data and monitor against hacking and data breaches.

But political strategist Greg Valliere predicted that Washington "won't meaningfully tackle this issue until there's a spectacular cybersecurity incident."

Valliere noted in a May commentary that "a more muscular bill" to give the government new power to coordinate anti-hacking policies "has stalled—thanks to the privacy paranoia generated by Edward Snowden and the ACLU."

Indeed, in introducing H.R. 3696, Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said that the federal government's response to the cyberthreat "has so far been haphazard."

H.R. 3696 was sent to the full House for consideration and codifies several cybersecurity efforts already in progress; beefs up others, like the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center; and focuses on partnerships with the private sector. It is intended to be budget neutral.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council included in its 2014 priorities list cyberthreats and the increase of trading-related operational outages and incidents that could cause disruptions to markets and the financial system.

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Melanie Waddell

Melanie is senior editor and Washington bureau chief of ThinkAdvisor. Her ThinkAdvisor coverage zeros in on how politics, policy, legislation and regulations affect the investment advisory space. Melanie’s coverage has been cited in various lawmakers’ reports, letters and bills, and in the Labor Department’s fiduciary rule in 2024. In 2019, Melanie received an Honorable Mention, Range of Work by a Single Author award from @Folio. Melanie joined Investment Advisor magazine as New York bureau chief in 2000. She has been a columnist since 2002. She started her career in Washington in 1994, covering financial issues at American Banker. Since 1997, Melanie has been covering investment-related issues, holding senior editorial positions at American Banker publications in both Washington and New York. Briefly, she was content chief for Internet Capital Group’s EFinancialWorld in New York and wrote freelance articles for Institutional Investor. Melanie holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Towson University. She interned at The Baltimore Sun and its suburban edition.