Business groups campaign for long-term renewal of information sharing law
Their target for extending the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA 2015) is the annual "must-pass" defense authorization bill, but a year-long standoff persists.
By Tim Starks, November 2, 2026
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Major industry groups are advocating for Congress to include a 10-year extension of CISA 2015 in the defense policy bill. Congress has had a history of short-term renewals and lapses since the law's previous 10-year sunset in 2021. It is set to expire again on December 11.
On Sunday, 35 business groups sent a letter to leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, urging them to renew the law for a decade as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2027 negotiations.
"The case for a long-term reauthorization has only grown more urgent," they wrote. "Recent incidents have demonstrated that advanced AI systems can identify and exploit software vulnerabilities at machine speed, collapsing the window between the discovery of a weakness and its use in an attack."
"AI tools are also making sophisticated cyber capabilities cheaper, faster, and easier to use, allowing threats to spread and adapt in real time," they continued. "In this environment, the speed and breadth with which defenders share information determines whether they keep pace with adversaries. That speed depends on the legal certainty CISA 2015 provides."
Signatories include prominent business groups like the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, as well as sector-specific organizations representing aviation, telecommunications, and technology.
The House version of the defense bill includes a 10-year extension, while the Senate version does not, primarily due to objections from Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Paul has linked his support for a long-term extension to the inclusion of provisions he believes curtail free speech at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Top Trump administration cyber officials have urged Congress for a straightforward extension of CISA 2015 laws, and the Trump administration emphasized its efforts to curb CISA's alleged free-speech-limiting practices, which the Biden administration denied.
The annual defense policy bill typically passes at the end of the calendar year or early in the next.