{"id":238628,"date":"2026-06-29T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/government-groups-call-for-300m-to-fund-cyber-grant-program\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T14:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T18:00:10","slug":"government-groups-call-for-300m-to-fund-cyber-grant-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/government-groups-call-for-300m-to-fund-cyber-grant-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Government groups call for $300M to fund cyber grant program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Government groups call for $300M to fund cyber grant program<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.route-fifty.com\/cybersecurity\/2026\/06\/government-groups-call-300m-fund-cyber-grant-program\/414496\/?orefu003drf-homepage-river<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-29 13:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.route-fifty.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points.
\nSeveral state and local government groups called on the U.S. Senate to spend $300 million to fund a cybersecurity grant program in the coming fiscal year.A joint letter from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the International City\/County Management Association urged appropriators to approve the money for the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program for Fiscal Year 2027.The letter is addressed to Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Katie Britt, R-Ala., who chair the Senate Appropriations Committee and its Subcommittee on Homeland Security, respectively, as well as Sens. Patty Murray,, D-Wash., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn.,\u00a0 the committee and subcommittee\u2019s ranking members.In it, the groups said the $1 billion SLCGP has \u201cevolved to become a vital tool\u201d for cybersecurity across state, local, Tribal and territorial governments, and they argued the call for $300 million is \u201cconsistent with the average funding levels” in the 2021 infrastructure law that established the program.\u201cThe program has helped state and local governments, particularly smaller and rural communities with limited resources, implement critical protections, including multifactor authentication, endpoint detection and response, identity and access management, cyber incident response planning, statewide risk assessments, cybersecurity training and shared security services,\u201d the letter says. Spokespeople for all four Senate addressees did not respond to Route Fifty\u2019s requests for comment.The four-year cyber grant program received a temporary authority extension through September as part of a government funding deal last year. The House voted in November to approve the Protecting Information by Local Leaders for Agency Resilience \u2014 or PILLAR \u2014 Act, which would reauthorize the grant program for another 10 years. A companion bill is pending in the Senate with only a one-year extension, but with a $300 million appropriation, hence this letter\u2019s request.For its part, the government groups said that level of funding \u201crepresents a prudent investment in the security of America\u2019s public infrastructure.\u201d They also called for a long-term authorization of the program so that governments can plan for what\u2019s next.\u201cStates and local governments require certainty to develop multi-year cybersecurity strategies and make sustained investments in personnel, technology, and shared services. A long-term authorization will preserve and strengthen the federal-state-local partnership that has made SLCGP such a success,\u201d the letter says.State and local leaders have said consistently that the cyber grant program has helped them strengthen their cybersecurity postures, although they have acknowledged that much more work lies ahead, hence the need for extra funding.\u201cThe scale, speed, and complexity of today\u2019s threat environment require sustained funding, operational flexibility, and the ability to respond at the pace of emerging threats,\u201d Tennessee Chief Information Officer Kristin Darby said in written testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee\u2019s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation last month. \u201cThe State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program is one of the most effective tools available to strengthen our collective defense.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Government groups call for $300M to fund cyber grant program https:\/\/www.route-fifty.com\/cybersecurity\/2026\/06\/government-groups-call-300m-fund-cyber-grant-program\/414496\/?orefu003drf-homepage-river Publish Date: 2026-06-29 13:00:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":238629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.route-fifty.com\/media\/img\/cd\/2026\/06\/29\/20260629_SLCGP_Yuichiro_Chino\/open-graph.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238628"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}