(Cyberwar.news) The old saying goes, “Better late than never,” and that certainly applies to President Obama’s focus on cybersecurity. For much of his presidency, he has been largely AWOL when it comes to developing policies and approaches to better protect the nation’s vast, critical IT infrastructure. But that’s about to chance.
In his final budget request released earlier this week, the president has asked Congress to dramatically increase cybersecurity funding while also directing his administration to implement a series of “near-term actions” to bolster cyber defenses.
The Cybersecurity National Action Plan, or CNAP, launches a smattering of public-private partnerships, a number of intergovernmental centers focused on cyber, a senior administration cybersecurity position and launches a new campaign aimed at raising public awareness, FierceGovernmentIT reported.
CNAP also includes large investments in IT modernization and cybersecurity. Further, in coordination with the new program, Obama has issued an executive order creating a permanent Federal Privacy Council.
As noted by Reuters, the 2017 budget request includes $19 billion for cyber security, an increase of $5 billion over last year’s request. While the overall budget plan faces stiff opposition on many levels from a Republican-led Congress, cybersecurity measures have generally received bipartisan support.
A White House fact sheet called the plan “the capstone of more than seven years of determined effort” by the administration to comprehend lessons that have been learned from a series of breaches and cybersecurity missteps, as well as best practices from upcoming cybersecurity trends, threats and intrusions
Regarding the short-term actions, the White House says its plan sets up a “long-term strategy to enhance cybersecurity awareness and protections, protect privacy, maintain public safety as well as economic and national security, and empower Americans to take better control of their digital security.”
In recent days Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has appeared before Congress to once again warn of the rising cyber threat against the U.S. from nations like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
He said such threats “could lead to widespread vulnerabilities in civilian infrastructures and U.S. government systems.”
Cyber threats are “among the most urgent dangers to America’s economic and national security,” Obama said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published this week.
The administration has suffered through a series of embarrassing hacks and attacks of its IT systems, the most high-profile of which was the Office of Personnel Management, reportedly by Chinese hackers.
But also, reports have noted that hackers from Russia and other nations may have planted so-called “backdoors” into critical U.S. infrastructure like nuclear plants, the power grid in general and even hydroelectric plants and dams.
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