Biden signs executive order to improve federal cybersecurity
By Maggie Miller - 05/12/21 06:42 PM EDT
President Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order aimed at improving federal cybersecurity, with the order coming on the heels of multiple major and damaging cyberattacks including the one on the Colonial Pipeline.
A senior administration official told reporters Wednesday the executive order, which has been in the works since early in the Biden administration, is meant to serve as an example to the private sector of the federal government taking the lead on strengthening cybersecurity.
“Today more than ever, cybersecurity is a national security imperative and an economic imperative,” the senior administration official said. “Today’s executive order makes a down payment towards modernizing our cyber defenses and safeguarding many of the services on which we rely. It reflects a fundamental shift in our mindset from incident response to prevention, from talking about security to doing security.”
The executive order requires the establishment of baseline cybersecurity standards for all software sold to the federal government, and that all software used by the government meet these standards within nine months. Software developers doing business with the government are required to make their security data publicly available.
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https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/553243-biden-signs-executive-order-to-improve-federal-cybersecurity-following
