Bicameral, Bipartisan Bill Introduced to Promote Cyber Hygiene in Response to WannaCry

In response to the WannaCry ransomware that affected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide last month (see 1705180032 and 1705160038), House and Senate lawmakers proposed bipartisan legislation that would establish baseline, voluntary cyber hygiene best practices that would be publicly accessible online. In a joint news release, Reps. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Ed Markey, D-Mass., said the Promoting Good Cyber Hygiene Act would direct the Department of Homeland Security, the FTC and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create those standards and consider measures such as multifactor authentication and data loss prevention. Eshoo said experts suggested 90 percent of successful cyberattacks are due to system administrators "overlooking" cyber hygiene and security management. She said the attacks cost the U.S. economy "half a trillion dollars annually" in identity theft, exposed financial data and other things.