Mulled FCC repealment of telco cyber rules resisted by senator

Reuters reports that Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has been urged by the Senate Commerce Committee's top Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington to ditch the planned revocation of cybersecurity requirements for telecommunications providers implemented by the Biden administration following the widespread Salt Typhoon breach of U.S. telcos, including AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies, last year.

Maintaining the ruling is crucial to ensure that telecommunications firms remain responsible for their customers' cybersecurity, according to Cantwell, whose letter also emphasized that the FCC chair's proposal to rescind the regulations was hinged on intense lobbying from breached telcos. Carr's silence on the Trump administration's refusal to implement a Biden-era law that would have prohibited TikTok in the U.S. unless it had been divested by its Chinese owners. Such a development comes after Carr noted that cybersecurity requirements for telcos were "legally erroneous and ineffective at promoting cybersecurity."