A short-term extension of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA 2015) to January 30 is included in H.R. 5371, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2026, which was recently signed into law by President Trump.
H.R. 5371 provides permanent funding for three of 12 annual spending bills and stop-gap spending through January 30, 2026, for programs funded by the remainder.
CISA 2015 expired on October 1 after Congress failed to reauthorize it.
CISA 2015 set up policies and procedures for the voluntary sharing of cybersecurity threat information between and among the federal government and private entities (the definition of which includes public power utilities) and provides limited liability and antitrust protection for these activities.
APPA strongly supported the enactment of CISA 2015 and supports a clean, long-term reauthorization of CISA 2015.
While reauthorization of CISA 2015 had broad, bipartisan support in the House and the Senate, Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC) Chairman Rand Paul (R-KY) was – and continues to be – against a clean, long-term reauthorization.
Paul floated a draft bill earlier this fall to reauthorize CISA 2015 for two years with several significant changes – including removing Freedom of Information Act protections for information shared with the government (a key pillar of the legislation), removing federal preemption, and changing key definitions like those of cyber threat indicators and defensive measures.
Paul’s draft bill would have also added a new section restricting the federal government from censoring speech in an effort to counter misinformation.
Earlier this year, Senate HSGAC Ranking Member Gary Peters (D-MI) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rounds (R-SD) introduced a bill (S. 1337) to extend CISA 2015 for an additional 10 years. On September 3, the House Homeland Security Committee approved H.R. 5079, the Widespread Information Management for the Welfare of Infrastructure and Government Act, to reauthorize CISA 2015 for an additional 10 years.
Sponsored by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), the bill included some minor changes to the underlying text of CISA 2015 and was approved unanimously by the committee.
