Sens. Mark Warner and Ted Cruz introduced the Telecommunications Cybersecurity and Resilience Act on Thursday, nearly two years after Salt Typhoon exposed weaknesses in major U.S. telecom networks. The bill would create a Telecommunications Cybersecurity Working Group inside the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and have it draw in carriers, suppliers, experts, and federal agencies.
The group would write voluntary, telecom-specific best practices, revisit them every two years or after major incidents, and build an optional certification process through independent third-party assessors. In plain terms, it tries to raise the floor through shared guidance rather than mandatory rules, so the outcome depends on how many carriers and vendors choose to adopt it and how consistently they do so.
That leaves the policy result uneven by design: networks carrying voice, SMS, and call-routing traffic may still end up with different security baselines from provider to provider. After the rollback of earlier telecom rules, the bill shows Congress leaning toward a collaborative model, not a federal mandate, for the sector's next security baseline.
Lawmakers introduce bill for voluntary telecom cyber rules after Salt Typhoon hacks
Mark Warner (D-VA) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced the Telecommunications Cybersecurity and Resilience Act on Thursday, arguing that the new effort was necessary in light of the Salt Typhoon attacks which saw Chinese hackers breach nearly all of the major telecommunications giants in the U.S.
Bipartisan Senate leaders introduce bill to bolster telecom cybersecurity in response to Salt Typhoon hacks
Mark Warner and Ted Cruz introduced bipartisan legislation to establish voluntary telecom cybersecurity standards nearly two years after the Salt Typhoon hack.