U.S. President Donald J. Trump signed a sweeping Executive Order that reorients U.S. cybersecurity strategy by focusing on critical protections against foreign cyber threats and enhancing secure technology practices. The move amends ‘problematic elements’ of Executive Orders (14144 and 13694), issued by former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama. In their place, the Trump move seeks to lay out a technical agenda built around securing infrastructure, cleaning up federal practices, and confronting next-generation threats.
President Trump has directed the federal government to prioritize the advancement of secure software development across all systems and platforms. The Executive Order instructs federal departments and agencies to take action on securing border gateway protocols in order to prevent the hijacking of network interconnections. It also calls for agency-level efforts to adopt post-quantum cryptographic standards, ensuring long-term protection against threats that could emerge from future computing architectures.
The executive order identified that foreign nations and criminals continue to conduct cyber campaigns targeting the U.S. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) presents the most active and persistent cyber threat to the U.S. government, private sector, and critical infrastructure networks, but significant threats also emanate from Russia, Iran, North Korea, and others who undermine U.S. cybersecurity. These campaigns disrupt the delivery of critical services across the nation, cost billions of dollars, and undermine Americans’ security and privacy. Clearly, more must be done to improve the nation’s cybersecurity against these threats.
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