On Wednesday, April 18, 2018, Representative Ted Yoho (R-FL) of the United States Congress introduced legislation entitled the Cyber Deterrence and Response Act of 2018.  The legislation will be considered by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, in addition to the Committees on Financial Services, Oversight and Government Reform, and Judiciary. Collectively, these committees have jurisdiction over matters dealing with all federal law enforcement, including the FBI and the financial services industry.

The Cyber Deterrence and Response Act of 2018 (H.R. 5576) is sponsored by both Republican and Democratic Members of the House of Representatives and has the stated goal of developing a unified framework to combat state-sponsored cyber threats. The sponsors of the bill intend to create such a framework by developing a three-step process for identifying, deterring and responding to malicious, state-sponsored cyber attacks.

If passed, the bill would require the President of the United States to identify state-sponsored cyber criminals who intend to hack into U.S. systems and officially designate these actors as cyber threats. Finally, in response, the legislation would require the President to impose sanctions to combat the malicious cyber intrusions. The bill gives the President the ability to waive sanctions for up to one year, and the sanctions may be both travel and non-travel related.

The legislation is intended to codify an executive order issued by U.S. President Barack Obama in 2015 and a related executive order that he issued in December 2016. The 2015 order endeavors to align the efforts of private companies and the federal government in order to promote public-private cooperation to combat cyber threats. The 2016 order outlines tools that the federal government may deploy to combat “the increasing prevalence and severity of malicious cyber-enabled activities.”

This bill is not currently scheduled for legislative markup.