S. 5360: Rural and Municipal Utility Cybersecurity Act

This bill would reauthorize a federal grant and technical assistance program for rural electric cooperatives, municipally owned utilities, and certain other smaller electric utilities so they can improve their cybersecurity.

What the program would do

The bill would keep in place the Rural and Municipal Utility Advanced Cybersecurity Grant and Technical Assistance Program and direct the Department of Energy to provide:

• Technical assistance to eligible utilities;
• Grants, cooperative agreements, and prizes to help pay for cybersecurity improvements.

The goal is to help these utilities:

• prevent cyberattacks;
• detect them sooner;
• respond to incidents;
• recover more quickly after an attack.

Who could receive help

The bill defines eligible entities to include:

• rural electric cooperatives;
• electric utilities owned by a city, county, or other political subdivision of a state;
• utilities owned by certain public agencies or authorities;
• nonprofit entities that partner with at least six eligible utilities;
• smaller investor-owned electric utilities that sell less than 4 million megawatt hours of electricity per year.

How funding would be used

The program would focus on deploying advanced cybersecurity technology, which the bill broadly defines to include hardware, software, services, and other tools that improve an electric utility’s ability to defend against cyber threats.

The bill also says the program should help more eligible utilities participate in cybersecurity threat information-sharing programs.

How awards would be distributed

The Secretary of Energy would have to:

• set criteria for awarding assistance and funding;
• use either competitive or noncompetitive awards, depending on the situation and available appropriations;
• be allowed to make agreements that help carry out the program;
• create a process to inform eligible utilities about funding and technical assistance opportunities.

The bill says the Secretary should give priority to utilities that:

• have limited cybersecurity resources;
• own assets important to the reliability of the bulk power system;
• own or operate defense-critical electric infrastructure.

Information privacy

Information shared with the federal government or state, tribal, or local governments under the program would be treated as voluntarily shared information and would be exempt from public disclosure under federal and similar state or local open records laws.

Funding

The bill would authorize $250 million in appropriations for fiscal years 2027 through 2031 to carry out the program.

Relevant Companies

None found