Biden Executive Order on Cybersecurity After Colonial Pipeline

A series of initiatives designed to better equip the federal services with the appropriate cybersecurity tools consolidate the presidential decree signed by the American president Joe Biden, after cyber attack on the Colonial Pipeline company.

The decree is about upgrading federal cybersecurity infrastructure and promoting improvements to digital security rules across the private sector, which has been hit by a wave of technologically advanced cyber-attacks.

It was signed, as broadcast by AMPE, after the cyber attack against her Colonial Pipeline, which caused some of its internal computer systems to shut down due to malware.

The cyber attack led Colonial to shut down its main fuel pipeline, causing fuel shortages and panic markets in the southeastern United States.

Atlanta-based Colonial announced Wednesday that it had “reopened the pipeline at 5pm East Coast.”

The presidential decree also requires companies selling software to the US government to follow certain rules cybersecurity in their products, but also to indicate when they themselves have received similar malicious digital attacks.

A senior US government official described the executive order as a measure that would have a “very significant” impact on the government’s ability to detect and respond to malicious cyberattacks.

The cyber attack on the said pipeline network is the latest incident, in a a series of cyberattacks against US companies and government agencies within the last six months.

In December, a Russian cyber-surveillance company became known for infiltrating nine federal agencies. More recently, the US government has been investigating a different spying campaign linked to China and influencing five federal government political services.

“It is difficult to learn from every incident and ensure that the government and companies have information to protect themselves,” he said. “So we pressed things as hard as we could and said that anyone doing business with the US government should report cyber security incidents so that we can use that information to protect the Americans.”

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