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A House panel will hold a hearing on Sept. 24 with a top CrowdStrike executive to examine the impact of the cybersecurity company’s faulty software update that caused a global technology outage in July. Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s senior vice president of counter-adversary operations, will testify before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection. 'This hearing will be an important opportunity to learn more about what steps the company has taken in the aftermath of the outage to ensure it doesn’t happen again,' Rep. Andrew Garbarino, New York Republican who chairs the subcommittee, said in a statement. The CrowdStrike outage on July 19 caused global disruptions that grounded thousands of airline flights and took hospitals, banks, retailers and other services offline. George Kurtz, the company’s founder and CEO, said at the time that the outage was not due to a cyberattack but caused by a defect found in a content update for CrowdStrike’s Falcon cybersecurity platform on Windows-hosted computers. He acknowledged that adversaries and bad actors would try to exploit such events, which is a key reason the House panel is holding a hearing on the matter. 'While the outage was not due to a threat actor, we know our adversaries and opportunistic criminals have been watching closely,' Mr. Garbarino said. 'They have learned how a faulty software update can trigger cascading effects on our critical infrastructure. It’s important the public and private sectors work together to mitigate risk going forward.'

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Boy Scout Troop 76 recently held a Court of Honor at Connetquot High School in Bohemia to recognize its newest Eagle Scouts - Thomas Caputo, Noah Johnson, Christopher Scharfenberger, Patric Gleason, and Michael Abbamonte. Eagle Scout is the highest rank a Boy Scout can achieve. Since the rank of Eagle Scout was established, only 4% of Scouts have successfully earned this rank. Andrew was proud to provide Congressional Certificates of Recognition for this impressive achievement.

Yesterday, a Back To School Backpack Giveaway was held in Islip. There was food, games, and school supply giveaways. Andrew's team was on-site to provide resources to the community during this day of family fun.

A constituent reached out to Andrew's office for help locating her passport renewal. She had sent in her passport renewal through the USPS in February. In April, she still had not received her passport and started investigating. The parcel was insured, but the time had lapsed to be reimbursed. Andrew's casework team got involved and the insurance amount was returned from USPS and a new passport was issued through the State Department.

Andrew knows how frustrating dealing with bureaucracy can be. That is why he has an entire team dedicated to helping constituents get what they need from the government. If you need help dealing with a federal agency, contact our office and our team will get to work on your case. 

This week, Andrew introduced the Community Flood Coverage Savings Act. The bill would create a community-based flood insurance pilot program at The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), allowing communities to group together to purchase coverage that residents may not be able to afford on their own. In a statement Andrew said, "Long Islanders are all too familiar with the realities of flooding. However, many households do not have sufficient coverage to fully recover from a natural disaster. By creating a community-based flood insurance pilot program at FEMA, we aim to bolster community resilience, lessen the protection gap that many communities are facing, and ensure that communities and residents who need coverage can afford it."