[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 118 (Thursday, July 13, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E975]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2018

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                               speech of

                           HON. GREGG HARPER

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 12, 2017

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the state of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 2810) to 
     authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2018 for military 
     activities of the Department of Defense and for military 
     construction, to prescribe military personnel strengths for 
     such fiscal year, and for other purposes:

  Mr. HARPER. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong support of the Harper/Brady 
Amendment, which is included in this en block package of amendments. 
Our amendment while simple is critical to the security of the House of 
Representatives and its information technology systems. This amendment 
allows the Speaker, with the concurrence of the Minority Leader, to 
request assistance from the Executive Branch, within the confines of 
current law, in the event there is a successful cybersecurity attack on 
the House of Representatives.
  Three scenarios readily come to mind in which Executive Branch 
assistance would be critical.
  The first scenario addresses a situation in which the House of 
Representatives has a suspicion that a nation-state sponsored actor has 
successfully infiltrated the House network. The House of 
Representatives would need assistance from the National Security 
Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, or possibly even the 
Department of Defense's Cyber Command to help identify, eliminate and 
remove the nation-state sponsored actor from our network systems. The 
House of Representatives would also need additional assistance from the 
intelligence community to identify and validate the nation-state 
sponsored actor and their associated tactics, techniques, and 
procedures.
  The second scenario involves assistance from the appropriate law 
enforcement agency in the event the House of Representatives and its 
network systems are victims of criminal activity conducted by a 
malicious actor or actors.
  Finally, the House of Representatives would need assistance from the 
Executive Branch if a catastrophic event occurred and compromised a 
significant amount of the House of Representatives' enterprise system, 
and could not guarantee the integrity of the legislative process. The 
House of Representatives would seek assistance from the National 
Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the intelligence 
community, or the Department of Defense's Cyber Command to identify the 
root cause of the compromise; protect existing House information 
systems; detect any collateral damage resulting from the incident; 
respond, resolve, and remove the incident from the House systems; and 
finally, restore the House of Representatives to an acceptable 
operational state.
  The attempts to attack the House of Representatives are real. Every 
month, the House successfully defends against the three to four million 
cyber attacks against our networks. Before the July 4th recess, the 
House of Representatives successfully fought off a ``brute force 
attack'' in which more than 44,000 attempts to breach the networks 
occurred in just one day.
  We are not dealing with hypotheticals. It may be just a matter of 
time before one of the millions of attempts is successful. The House of 
Representatives must be prepared.
  I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment.

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