The Biden administration unveiled its national cybersecurity strategy, which focuses on having software vendors and service providers handle the responsibility of defending our country’s cyberspace. Washington’s new cybersecurity defense strategy recognizes that coordination between public and private sectors along with international allies and partners is critical in protecting the country from cyber threats. The White House explained they need to rebalance the cyberspace defense responsibilities by transferring the cybersecurity burden away from individuals, small companies, and local governments to organizations capable and best positioned to lower threats for all. The Federal Government will strengthen operational and strategic collaboration with software, hardware, and managed service providers capable of reshaping the cyber landscape for higher security and resilience. The main objectives are to defend critical infrastructure in the United States, disrupt malicious threat actors attempting to jeopardize United State interests, invest strategically to build a more secure digital ecosystem, and form international collaborations to achieve common goals.
Other significant proposals, in addition to diverting liability for security failures to software companies, including more aggressive campaigns aimed at making state-baked/financially motivated malicious activity unprofitable and ineffective along with ensuring that the United States Infrastructure is no longer used in attacks targeting U.S. organizations. Disruption efforts needs to become so persistent and focused that criminal cyber activities become unprofitable and foreign government actors engaged in malicious cyber activities are no longer considered effective methods of achieving their objectives. All service providers need to put reasonable efforts to protect their infrastructure usage against abuse or other criminals’ behavior making it more difficult for threat operators to abuse United States-based infrastructure while protecting individual privacy. Additionally, the new strategy emphasizes ransomware as a major threat, emphasizing how the administration “strongly opposes ransom payment” and continues to target ransomware groups operating from safe zones, including Russia, North Korea, and Iran.
According to the administration, when it comes to the biggest threats to national cybersecurity, China and Russia are the most active and aggressive states behind malicious activities targeting critical infrastructure and assets in the United States. China expanded its cyber operations beyond intellectual property theft over the past ten years to become the most advanced strategic opponent, capable of threatening United States interests and dominating emerging technologies crucial to global development. Russia is still a persistent cyber threat, refining its cyber espionage, attack, influence, and disinformation capabilities, coercing sovereign countries, harboring transnational criminal actors, undermining United States alliances and partnerships, and undermining the rules-based international systems. The Office of National Cyber Director (ONCD), in collaboration with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), will coordinate efforts to implement the new cybersecurity strategy, which will be overseen by the National Security Council (NSC). Annual reports will be provided to the President and the United States Congress on the strategy’s effectiveness. Additionally, yearly guidance on cybersecurity budget priorities to federal agencies ensures their goals are met.
Even though the new National Cybersecurity plan shifts the responsibilities of defending the country’s cyberspace to cybersecurity companies and service providers, it’s still critical for companies to always remain vigilant of the latest threat landscape and regularly back up their data network. At SpearTip, our pre-breach advisory services allow our engineers to examine security posture to improve the weak points in companies’ networks. Our team engages with their people, processes, and technology to measure the maturity of the technical environment. With any vulnerability we uncover, we provide technical roadmaps for companies ensuring they have awareness and support to optimize their overall cybersecurity posture. Our gap analysis allows us to discover blind spots in companies that can lead to significant compromises and go beyond simple compliance frameworks and examine the daily cyber function within companies. This can lead to critical recommendations by exposing vulnerabilities in software, people, and processes.
If your company is experiencing a breach, call our Security Operations Centers at 833.997.7327 to speak directly with an engineer.
