President Trump Issues New Executive Order Concerning Cybersecurity

President Trump recently issued an Executive Order on cybersecurity. The Order is directed at federal agencies and their tasks to increase the protection of cybersecurity infrastructure in the United States.

The Order focuses on setting aggressive benchmarks to ensure federal departments and agencies set the standard for cybersecurity. Agencies were directed to provide a risk management report to the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget within 90 days of the issuance of the order.

Following a similar Executive Order issued by Obama in 2013 the Department of Homeland Security was tasked with identifying critical infrastructure and confidentially notifying owners and operators of designated critical infrastructure. The Order directs agency heads to support the cybersecurity risk management efforts of those owners and operators through soliciting input and evaluating their progress.

The Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of Homeland Security will also lead an open and transparent process to identify and pursue actions to increase resiliency against botnet and other automated, distributed attacks, such as the “Wannacry” Ransomware attack that occurred in May 2017 across the globe.

For further information, the entire Executive Order may be found here.