Biden takes final big step to protect US networks from hackers from China and elsewhere

Washington CNN —

President Joe Biden will sign an executive order Thursday that is his latest attempt to bolster U.S. cyber defenses after a series of damaging cyberattacks on federal networks that U.S. officials have blamed on Chinese and Russian agents.

The directive is the product of a months-long review by U.S. officials of major hacking operations that have taken place under the Biden administration, from Russia's alleged disruption of a satellite provider before the invasion to large scale of Ukraine by the Kremlin, up to the alleged infiltration by China of American telecommunications networks. to spy on leading Republicans and Democrats.

The goal is to put the new administration and the country on a path for continued success and make hacking more expensive and difficult for China, Russia, Iran and ransomware criminals, the journalists Anne Neuberger, a senior White House official.

The order will require agencies to use stronger encryption to protect federal employees' calls and text messages from interception, according to a draft reviewed by CNN. It's a nod to the Chinese telecommunications hack, which attacked targets using insecure messages. The directive also gives the Department of Homeland Security's cyber agency more power to collect key data from other agencies' networks to investigate sophisticated hacking operations and makes it easier for the Treasury Department to sanction cybercriminals or spies who disrupt critical U.S. infrastructure.

The executive order also calls for new programs to try to reduce the billions of dollars in identity fraud that has affected Americans and to use artificial intelligence to protect the U.S. energy sector from hacks.

The order reflects Biden administration officials' long-standing frustration with lax security practices by software companies that sell to the U.S. government. A U.S. government-backed review of Microsoft's security practices, for example, revealed a cascade of avoidable errors that allowed another group of Chinese hackers to hack the tech giants' network and then email accounts senior US officials in 2023. (Microsoft announced reforms to its security policies.)

During his first months in office, Biden issued another cybersecurity order requiring contractors to meet a minimum set of security standards when doing business with the government. But Thursday's directive finally requires these contractors to provide data to the government and the public demonstrating that their software meets secure development requirements. Federal agencies will post the receipts online for the public to view, according to the order.

We weren't validating that the products we were using were actually telling us that they met that safety standard, Neuberger said.

Cybersecurity is traditionally a bipartisan issue. It is not yet clear to what extent the new Trump team that takes office next week will retain or remove the executive order. Trump's new national security adviser, Mike Waltz, has called for more offensive cyber operations, but the next administration has not outlined cyber defense strategies.

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