US National Cyber Defense Policy

The US Senate will vote on its version of the 2021 defense authorisation bill in the near future. US Joint Cyber Planning has proposed an amendment to the 2021 defense policy bill which aims to help government and private actors to respond quickly to cyber attacks mounted from Russia, China and elsewhere. 

The spending  package authorises $740 billion for the military and it allocates an extra $15 million to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) which for tye first timewill be required to report on risks posed by the use of technology from Huawei, whose 5G networking products are widely used around the world and which is increasingly regarded in the US as a security threat

Right now, US companies are largely on their own for cyber security defense. even in responding to big incidents and there is little coordination between the government and the private sector. For exmaple, the US government may have known as early as 2015 about Russians’ presence on servers belonging to the Democratic National Committee, however, it wasn’t until July 2018, nearly two years after the release of information stolen from the DNC, that the NSA announced the formation of a group to counter aggressive Russian cyber activities.

There’s a lot of room for improvement in coordinating public and private cyber responses.

Ex-Democrat party Presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders wants to find out what is going on inside the Pentagon.and has tabled an amendment that woud require the Pentagon comptroller to issue guidance that would incentivise different agencies and services for audit achievements.

These recommendation arise from the Cyberspace Solarium Commission  report on legidative proposals and is expected to have broad bipartisan support in Congress.

Reuters:       DefenseOne:       Federal News Network:    Solarium Commission:        JDSupra: 

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