White House Orders Federal Agencies To Comply With Cybersecurity Practices

White House Orders Federal Agencies To Comply With Cybersecurity Practices

Time Stamp: August 18, 2023 4:55 PM

Tyler Cross Tyler Cross
Published on: August 18, 2023 White House Orders Federal Agencies To Comply With Cybersecurity Practices

After several federal agencies have failed to comply with the rules created in an executive order by President Biden in 2021, the White House is ordering these agencies to update their practices.

During Biden’s first few months of office, multiple large-scale cyberattacks were launched on the US, including the SolarWinds attack from Russia that affected multiple federal agencies, and critical attacks on key US infrastructure.

This put pressure on the administration to improve its cybersecurity efforts, including launching a wide-reaching executive order for federal agencies and federal contractors to implement a set of stronger security practices to make hacking their networks much harder.

However, as of the end of June, these companies haven’t brought their security practices up to par, while the pace of cyberattacks is still steadily increasing.

The failure to comply was “leaving the U.S. Government exposed to malicious cyber intrusions and undermining the example the Government must set for adequate cybersecurity practices,” explains Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor in a recent memo.

Sullivan also stated that he’s reached out to senior officials to push them into bringing their practices in line with the new rules. US officials underline that while we have increased our ability to deal with cyber threats, we aren’t improving quickly enough.

This push to improve cybersecurity comes after a series of devastating hacks, like the data breach on the MOVEit file transfer software, which stole the data of hundreds of companies, state and federal governments, and even international government agencies.

Just days ago, top US officials warned about the possibility of a large-scale attack coming from China that could pose a serious risk to infrastructure like US oil pipelines and railways.

These are just a few of the recent cyber attacks that are pushing the White House to act with urgency in improving the country’s cybersecurity defenses.

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