To embed, copy and paste the code into your website or blog:
On Wednesday, May 12, 2021, President Biden issued an ambitious and sweeping Executive Order focused on combating digital threats to US networks and infrastructure. The Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity (Cybersecurity EO) sets out to improve cybersecurity, particularly in relation to federal government systems, and follows several significant cyber incidents affecting the nation’s critical infrastructure. By leveraging the federal government’s significant purchasing power to direct agencies to develop and ultimately impose a variety of new cybersecurity mandates, the Biden Administration seeks to increase cybersecurity requirements across the federal government and a range of critical industries.
<i>America finally woke up to the reality that we have a ransomware emergency worthy of real attention. How did events unfold and what will happen next? </i>
[co-author: Tawanna Lee]
On May 12, 2021, President Biden issued the long-expected
Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity (“EO” or “Order”). The EO comes amidst a series of high-profile cyber-attacks on the Nation and its critical infrastructure, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) supply chain providers, and federal contractors, adding a heightened sense of urgency behind its implementation. In the related Fact Sheet the White House notes that “[r]ecent cybersecurity incidents such as SolarWinds, Microsoft Exchange, and the Colonial Pipeline incident are a sobering reminder that U.S. public and private sector entities increasingly face sophisticated malicious cyber activity from both nation-state actors and cyber criminals.”
The true test is whether, and the speed at which, the president and Congress can put together these pieces like the executive order and Technology Modernization Fund’s prioritization of cybersecurity projects in a comprehensive way.