Co-written with Jason Burosh
As noted previously, President Biden recently signed an Executive Order to improve America's cybersecurity in the wake of major cyberattacks, such as SolarWinds.
Although this Executive Order only applies to the federal government and federal government systems. It can also be applied to thousands of government contractors that provide IT goods and services to the US government.
The first two sections highlight the need to prioritize detection and response capabilities while sharing threat intelligence. To summarize:
Section 1 of the Executive Order covers the Administration’s policy that the prevention, detection, assessment and remediation of cyber incidents is a top priority and essential to national and economic security. You can read more here.
Section 2 discusses the need to share threat information about the incidents they suffer with the federal government, as well as collect and preserve data that could aid threat detection, investigation and response, highligted by:
“The Executive Order ensures that IT Service Providers are able to share information with the government and requires them to share certain breach information. IT providers are often hesitant or unable to voluntarily share information about a compromise. Sometimes this can be due to contractual obligations; in other cases, providers simply may be hesitant to share information about their own security breaches. Removing any contractual barriers and requiring providers to share breach information that could impact Government networks is necessary to enable more effective defenses of Federal departments, and to improve the Nation's cybersecurity as a whole.”
You can find out more info by reading the FACT SHEET
