President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed a much-anticipated executive order aimed at strengthening the protection of computer networks and systems across the federal government and the nation.
It comes as the United States grapples with multiple ongoing cybersecurity incidents.
“Federal agencies can’t defend what they can’t see,” a senior administration official said during a call to preview the order with reporters. The official added that the effort “is about taking the steps necessary to prevent cyber intrusions from happening in the first place, and second—ensuring we’re well-positioned to act rapidly.”
Among many inclusions, the order calls for the modernization and implementation of stronger cybersecurity standards across the federal government for information and operational technology. It aims to help move agencies to “secure cloud services and a zero-trust architecture, and mandates deployment of multifactor authentication and encryption [within] a specific time period,” a fact sheet the White House published on the order notes.
The policy also establishes new approaches to securing software. In particular, it directs the Commerce Department to "identify existing or develop new standards, tools and best practices" for companies that sell software to the government.
In the order, the president additionally calls on the Homeland Security secretary to form a Cybersecurity Safety Review Board co-chaired by senior officials from the government and private sector. The group will ultimately convene after cyber incidents to analyze what happened and offer concrete recommendations regarding how to deal with them.
“We modeled it on the National Transportation Safety Board, used for airplane incidents,” the administration official confirmed.
During the call, the official said the order had ..
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