President Biden Issues Executive Order on Cybersecurity
On Wednesday, President Biden issued
a new executive order on improving the nation’s cybersecurity. The order goes significantly further than previous executive actions to tighten the cybersecurity standards for software and networks used by United States government agencies, bolsters the ability of the federal government to share information about security threats, and creates a federal panel to review security breaches (modeled after incident-review panels for air and other disasters). “This Executive Order makes a significant contribution toward modernizing cybersecurity defenses by protecting federal networks, improving information-sharing between the U.S. government and the private sector on cyber issues, and strengthening the United States’ ability to respond to incidents when they occur,” says
a White House fact sheet released along with the order. The fact sheet specifically mentioned recent high-profile security breaches like the SolarWinds incident and the Colonial Pipeline hack as motivating factors in issuing the order. (
Association of American Universities - May 17, 2021)