Jan. 16 (UPI) — President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Thursday to improve cybersecurity around the country in an effort to protect the privacy of users and help shield them from cyberattacks.
The executive order, coming with just days left in his presidency, covers a list of initiatives to assist the federal government in defending against cyberattacks that seek to steal private information and digital identities of Americans.
“Adversarial countries and criminals continue to conduct cyber campaigns targeting the United States and Americans, with the People’s Republic of China presenting the most active and persistent cyber threat to the United States government, private sector, and critical infrastructure networks,” the White House said in a statement.
“These campaigns disrupt the delivery of critical services across the nation, cost billions of dollars, and undermine Americans’ security and privacy. More must be done to improve the nation’s cybersecurity against these threats.”
The order seeks to improve operational transparency and security in third-party software supply chains, have the federal government adopt proven security practices used by industry, and improve federal communications from enemy countries and criminals.
The order also looks to combat cybercrime and fraud that systematically defraud public benefits programs costing taxpayers and waste government funds and resources. It also calls on the federal government to speed up its development and deployment of artificial intelligence to fight cybercrimes and improve cybersecurity.
“Significant malicious cyber-enabled activities continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” Biden said in a letter to Congress.
“To address this continuing national emergency and protect against the growing and evolving threat of malicious cyber-enabled activities intrusions and sanctions evasion, Section 9 of the executive order I have issued updates the criteria to be used by the Secretary of the Treasury in designating a person for sanctions for engaging in specific malicious cyber-enabled activities and related conduct.”
