Promised and Delivered: President Trump Signed New Cyber Security Order

Since he was elected in November 2016, President Trump quickly promised that one of his top priorities would be strengthening the U.S. cyber security, stating that the current infrastructure is obsolete. Whether you like the new President or not is up to you, but no one can deny that he is at least delivering some of his promises, and cyber security is certainly one of them, despite a delay. Given this, on his 111th day in office the President signed a new order to improve the country’s cyber security. It comes at a time where the alleged Russian hacks to the elections are still a hot topic among the politicians of the world, though the President claims that this is not a motivation for the order, saying “the Russians are not our only adversary on the internet”. Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert revealed some of the details behind this new order that focuses primarily on the protection of the federal networks, the critical infrastructure and all everyday online users. And much of this will be done by reforming the old systems.

“We’ve got to move to the cloud to try to protect ourselves,” said Bossert during the White House press briefing, adding that the annual costs of the current federal infrastructure reach $80 billion, an “inordinate amount of money” that is used to “protect antiquated systems”. So from now on all of the U.S.’s federal agencies will most likely be moving to a centralized infrastructure network and work together instead of each and every one of them developing their own defenses. In addition, these agencies are now required to measure their own risk of vulnerability and submit reports within 90 days following the National Institute for Standards and Technology criteria, something that the previous Obama administration already encouraged the private sector to do.