Food and Agriculture Industry Cybersecurity Support Act

Food and Agriculture Industry Cybersecurity Support Act

This bill requires the establishment of a clearinghouse for food and agriculture cybersecurity resources and the development of related best practices recommendations.

Specifically, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) must establish a publicly available clearinghouse that contains current food and agriculture industry focused cybersecurity resources.

Further, the NTIA must develop voluntary cybersecurity recommendations relating to the development, maintenance, and operation of the food and agriculture industry. The recommendations must be based on a consolidation of public and private sector best practices and be included in the NTIA clearinghouse. The recommendations must also include, to the greatest extent practicable, materials that address (1) risk-based, cybersecurity-informed engineering; (2) planning for retention or recovery of positive control of systems in the event of a cybersecurity incident; (3) protection against unauthorized access to critical functions of the industry; and (4) plans for how industry businesses should respond to ransomware attacks.

The Government Accountability Office must coordinate a study on actions the federal government has taken or may take to improve cybersecurity in the food and agriculture industry.