Is US Cyber Security Actually Improving?

The US Government has announced new measures to boost cyber security within federal agencies following increased cyber attacks on private and public US infrastructure. It is one of the Biden administration’s biggest efforts yet to secure the computer networks on which the government relies to conduct business.

The aim is to make federal agencies tighten their cyber security controls after a number of hacks have taken place against government and private infrastructure in the last two years. 

The White House said in a statement that the "growing threat of sophisticated cyber attacks has underscored that the Federal Government can no longer depend on conventional perimeter-based defenses to protect critical systems and data." Under the strategy, federal employees will need to sign on to agency networks using multiple layers of security and agencies will have to do a better job of protecting their internal network traffic from hackers. The strategy gives agencies until the end of the 2024 fiscal year to meet these benchmarks and others.

This change was partially created by the 2020 spying campaign, alleged y by Russian hackers, that infiltrated several US agencies, which went undetected for  months. The hackers tampered with software made by federal contractor SolarWinds and others, to get into the unclassified networks of the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and other government networks.

This strategy which will be released by the Office of Management and Budget, came from a cyber security executive order that President Biden signed last May after there were breaches in federal networks and a ransomware attack on a major US pipeline operator.

The strategy seeks to apply a cyber security concept known as "zero trust," which is popular at big corporations, to the federal government. "Zero trust" dictates that no computer user or system inside or outside an organisation is inherently trusted. 

Continuous security checks are needed to ensure that hackers aren't impersonating someone, and systems should be isolated when possible to keep malicious code from spreading.  

One aspect of the strategy is a requirement that agencies have a "complete inventory" of every electronic device on their networks. "This strategy is a major step in our efforts to build a defensible and coherent approach to our federal cyber defenses," National Cyber Director Chris Inglis said in a statement.

The new strategy requires federal officials to use several layers of security when they sign on to agency networks, and it requires agencies to boost internal network protection through various methods, such as inviting independent experts to assess levels of security.

The White House:       NBC:      CNN:      The Hill:       Eminetra:     

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