Tech
US punts renewal of threat data sharing law to September | Computer Weekly
The United States’ Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 – CISA 2015 – which came within a hair’s breadth of lapsing for good at the end of 2025, will now likely be extended through to the end of September as part of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding package for 2026.
The DHS Appropriations Act narrowly passed the House of Representatives on Thursday 22 January, overcoming Democrat objections to funding the controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, which falls under the department’s remit. It will head to the Senate where it is expected to be taken up before the end of the month.
CISA 2015 enables organisations to report and share information on cyber security threats and incidents without fear of being on the receiving end of legal action as a result. The law was first enacted during the Obama years and contained a 10-year sunset clause allowing it to be revisited and revised.
By the autumn of 2025, legislators were making progress on a replacement but the federal government shutdown beginning at midnight on 1 October caused it to lapse briefly – although the true impact to real-world data-sharing appears to have been limited.
CISA 2015 was extended to the end of January 2026 as part of the agreement to reopen the government, and the latest extension should in theory buy time for Congress to figure out next steps.
Cynthia Kaiser, senior vice president of the Ransomware Research Center at Halcyon, said: “Any step forward in putting formal protections in place for information sharing between the private and public sectors should be seen as a positive. If this legislation is passed, industry will get renewed, but temporary safe harbour to share critical threat information.
“However, as 2025’s lapse in those protections made clear, we need a long-term solution. It’s critical that protecting cyber security information sharing is considered its own priority in Congress in order to maintain a strong national security posture,” she told Computer Weekly.
Mimecast CEO Marc van Zadelhoff said the extension was more than just legislative housekeeping but an acknowledgement that collaboration is one of the strongest cyber defence strategies there is.
“After its brief but concerning lapse during October’s government shutdown, CISA’s renewal reinforces a critical principle: transparency isn’t a liability, but an operational advantage,” he said.
“The extension provides what security leaders need most: legal protection to share threat intelligence without fear of becoming scapegoats. This protection is foundational. Without it, organisations operate in isolation, creating exploitable gaps that adversaries are quick to leverage. Just as cyber security risk is shared across the ecosystem, accountability must be distributed accordingly.
He added: “More importantly, this extension creates an opportunity to evolve our approach, moving from reactive disclosure toward structured, proactive intelligence sharing. Every incident, regardless of scale, becomes a learning opportunity that strengthens not just individual organisations, but entire industries and national security infrastructure.”
Zadelhoff advised cyber leaders to use the nine-month window strategically, describing it as a golden opportunity to embed accountability into operational processes, strengthen cross-sector collaboration, and improve how threat intelligence flows through the ecosystem. This means establishing clear protocols for what gets shared, when, and with whom, turning compliance activities into genuine security advantages.
“CISA 2015 represents more than regulatory obligation. It’s about building a culture where shared responsibility, proactive defense, and collective insight become the foundation of how we approach cyber security. The extension gives us time to get this right,” he said.
Cyber agency funding
Besides the work of multiple other agencies sitting under its umbrella, the DHS Appropriations Act also sets out annual funding and strategic missions for the US’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) – which performs a similar function to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and was the subject of deep cuts last year.
All told, the Act provides a total of $2.6bn (£1.9bn) to fund CISA this year, down on previous years, of which $763m will be directed towards cyber operations, including vulnerability management, capacity building, and threat hunting. It also includes some reductions to redundant, unauthorised or duplicate programmes at CISA.
It also provides an additional $20m to fund “critical” at CISA to counter unspecified cyber threats from China.
The Act furthermore points to a potential shake-up of how the agency engages with other organisations and partners on the global stage, instructing it to coordinate with other federal government departments to “assess ongoing and recently completed cyber security engagement activities with international partners.”
These activities include requests for support, technical assistance, and expertise given to other governments and critical infrastructure owners and operators outside the US.
Towards the end of 2026 – depending on when the funding package gets the go-ahead – the Act directs CISA to provide a report on processes for and barriers to providing these services, and the time and cost of such engagement.
The red-light therapy market shows no signs of slowing down. According to Fortune Business Insights, the industry is projected to grow from $1.21 billion in 2026 to $1.76 billion by 2034. Riding that wave is Hong Kong-based Megelin, which is currently running its largest Mother’s Day sale yet, offering major discounts on most of its LED devices and select electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) tools.
I’ve been testing the Duo Lux Laser & LED Light Therapy Mask for the past two weeks as part of a six-week trial. While I’m still forming my final verdict, I already have some early thoughts (more on that below). In the meantime, check out the standout deals because some of these discounts might be too good to pass up while they’re live.
This Laser & LED Light Therapy Mask Is $270 Off
The Megelin Duo Lux Laser & LED Light Therapy Mask combines 660-nanometer (nm) and 1,064-nm lasers with a 660-nm LED light for a more intensive treatment. The brand claims it can help smooth wrinkles, soothe inflammation, reduce pigmentation, and minimize redness. After two weeks of testing, I haven’t noticed any visible changes in my skin just yet, though to its credit, I also haven’t experienced any irritation or adverse reactions.
My biggest issue was the initial unboxing experience: The mask had a strong chemical odor that reminded me of formaldehyde. For a device that sits against your face and doesn’t have a mouth opening, that’s not exactly reassuring. Wiping it down and letting it air out significantly reduced the smell, but it definitely made for a less-than-ideal first impression.
That said, the mask itself is extremely comfortable. The soft, flexible silicone contours well to the face, and the dual-strap design keeps it secure without feeling restrictive. Treatments are quick and easy to customize thanks to four different modes, all controlled through an attached remote. And because it’s cordless, you’re free to move around while using it.
At full price, it’s a steep investment compared to its competitors. But with the current $270 discount, it becomes a much more compelling option, especially given the added laser therapy component, which isn’t as common at this price point. I’ll continue testing through the full six-week period before sharing my final verdict, but if you’re tempted to take advantage of the sale now, Megelin does offer a 60-day money-back guarantee and a one-year warranty.
Trump first teased the release in February in a Truth Social post. The Pentagon coordinated the release in partnership with the White House, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the Energy Department, NASA, and the FBI. Many of the files in this new drop contain documents that are already publicly available. However, some versions of these known documents in the new files contain more pages, or fewer redactions, than previously released versions.
More than 60 percent of Americans believe that the government is concealing information about UAP, according to YouGov, while 40 percent think UAP are likely alien in origin, according to Gallup. Congress has held hearings into whether there’s been a decades-long program to recover “non-human” technologies, yet evidence remains elusive.
Courtesy of the US Department of Defense
“If it’s just more blobby photos or redacted documents that don’t have any details in them, it’s more of the same,” Adam Frank, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester who studies the search for alien life, says of the new files. “What we need are actual scientific results from the investigations that should have been done if the most extraordinary claims being made are true.”
The document drop follows a week of high-profile discussions of aliens, including Stephen Colbert’s interview with former President Barack Obama, released on Wednesday. Obama cast doubt on government cover-ups about aliens by joking that “some guy guarding the installation would have taken a selfie with the alien and sent it to his girlfriend.”
Courtesy of the US Department of Defense
Members of the Artemis II crew also second-guessed the idea of a vast government-wide conspiracy to hide the discovery of extraterrestrial life in a discussion with The Daily this week.
“Do you realize that if we found alien life out there, and we came back and reported on it, NASA would never have a budget issue for the rest of eternity?” said Reid Weisman, the commander of Artemis II. “So trust me.”
Victor Glover, the astronaut who piloted the mission, added: “Why would we hide that from you?”
Philosopher Nick Bostrom recently posted a paper, where he postulated that a small chance of AI annihilating all humans might be worth the risk, because advanced AI might relieve humanity of “its universal death sentence.” That upbeat gamble is quite a leap from his previous dark musings on AI, which made him a doomer godfather. His 2014 book Superintelligence was an early examination of AI’s existential risk. One memorable thought experiment: An AI tasked with making paper clips winds up destroying humanity because all those resource-needy people are an impediment to paper clip production. His more recent book, Deep Utopia, reflects a shift in his focus. Bostrom, who leads Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, dwells on the “solved world” that comes if we get AI right.
STEVEN LEVY: Deep Utopia is more optimistic than your previous book. What changed for you?
NICK BOSTROM: I call myself a fretful optimist. I am very excited about the potential for radically improving human life and unlocking possibilities for our civilization. That’s consistent with the real possibility of things going wrong.
You wrote a paper with a striking argument: Since we’re all going to die anyway, the worst that can happen with AI is that we die sooner. But if AI works out, it might extend our lives, maybe indefinitely.
That paper explicitly looks at only one aspect of this. In any given academic paper, you can’t address life, the universe, and the meaning of everything. So let’s just look at this little issue and try to nail that down.
That isn’t a little issue.
I guess I’ve been irked by some of the arguments made by doomers who say that if you build AI, you’re going to kill me and my children and how dare you. Like the recent book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. Even more probable is that if nobody builds it, everyone dies! That’s been the experience for the last several 100,000 years.
But in the doomer scenario everybody dies and there’s no more people being born. Big difference.
I have obviously been very concerned with that. But in this paper, I’m looking at a different question, which is, what would be best for the currently existing human population like you and me and our families and the people in Bangladesh? It does seem like our life expectancy would go up if we develop AI, even if it is quite risky.
In Deep Utopia you speculate that AI could create incredible abundance, so much that humanity might have a huge problem with finding purpose. I live in the United States. We’re a very rich country, but our government, ostensibly with support of the people, has policies that deny services to the poor and distribute rewards to the rich. I think that even if AI was able to provide abundance for everyone, we would not supply it to everyone.
You might be right. Deep Utopia takes as its starting point the postulation that everything goes extremely well. If we do a reasonably good job on governance, everybody gets a share. There is quite a deep philosophical question of what a good human life would look like under these ideal circumstances.
The meaning of life is something you hear a lot about in Woody Allen movies and maybe in the philosophers community. I’m worried more about the wherewithal to support oneself and get a stake in this abundance.
The book is not only about meaning. That’s one out of a bunch of different values that it considers. This could be a wonderful emancipation from the drudgery that humans have been subjected to. If you have to give up, say, half of your waking hours as an adult just to make ends meet, doing some work you don’t enjoy and that you don’t believe in, that’s a sad condition. Society is so used to it that we’ve invented all kinds of rationalizations around it. It’s like a partial form of slavery.
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