This bill amends the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to reauthorize the Rural and Municipal Utility Advanced Cybersecurity Grant and Technical Assistance Program. The bill directs "the Secretary" to maintain a Program that gives technical assistance and awards funding (including grants, cooperative agreements, and prizes) to eligible electric utilities to help protect against, detect, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity threats. The Program's stated objectives are to deploy advanced cybersecurity technologies for electric utility systems and increase eligible entities' participation in cybersecurity threat information sharing. The bill defines eligible entities to include rural electric cooperatives, municipally owned utilities and similar local government utilities, certain not-for-profit partnerships of those utilities, and small investor-owned utilities that sell under 4,000,000 megawatt-hours per year. The Secretary must develop criteria for awards, may make awards on a competitive or noncompetitive basis, and must try to inform eligible entities about opportunities. Priority for funding and assistance is given to entities with limited cybersecurity resources, entities owning assets critical to the reliability of the bulk-power system, and entities that own or operate defense critical electric infrastructure. Information shared under the Program with the Federal Government or State, Tribal, or local governments is treated as voluntarily shared and is exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act and similar state, Tribal, or local laws.
The bill authorizes $250,000,000 to be appropriated to carry out the Program for fiscal years 2026 through 2030. The bill also notes that awards are subject to the availability of appropriations. No publicly available information on additional cost estimates or budgetary analyses is included in the provided text.
No publicly available information.
No publicly available information.