White House puts national cyber strategy into practice with implementation plan

Over the last few years, the U.S. has been under constant cyber-attacks from foreign-based hackers. The ongoing attacks on critical infrastructure, government agencies, private companies, and individuals have affected the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans. After Biden asked Putin to stop harboring cyber criminals, the attacks on U.S. companies increased even more, and no significant arrests were ever made in Moscow.

Russia is not the only foreign country that blatantly ignores the calls for a decrease in cybercrime aimed at the U.S. and its allies. Countries such as Iran, North Korea, China, and others also continue to target the increasingly digital U.S. economy. The damages caused by hacker attacks cost billions of dollars every year.

The attacks on U.S. entities made the current administration realize that more effort is needed to keep both government and private entities safe. The White House announced the National Cybersecurity Strategy Implementation Plan (NCSIP) early this week. The plan consists of more than sixty-five federal initiatives that aim to fight cybercrime, boost the economy, and protect Americans.

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5 main pillars

The NCSIP is a living document that will be updated by the White House every year and consists of the following five pillars.

The first pillar aims to prepare Federal agencies to prevent and handle attacks on critical infrastructure.

The second one consists of disrupting and dismantling threat actors who target government and private entities with ransomware.

The third pillar aims to shape market forces and drive security and resilience by increasing software transparency that allows entities to understand supply chain risk and hold their vendors accountable in case of a cyber incident.

The fourth part of the plan is to stimulate investments in future-proofing equipment implementation and enhance the U.S. involvement in International Cybersecurity Standardization.

The last pillar plans to get the U.S. to strengthen its communications with its allies and ensure more effective combined activities with partner nations.

The plan announced by the White House hopes to decrease the amount of cybercrime and the damages caused by cyber criminals on the USA and its allies around the globe. The plan will be supported by the Department of State and multiple other government agencies, including CISA and FBI, and physical science laboratories such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Each initiative has been assigned to a federal agency, and some have already been completed. However, the majority are ongoing or planned for the future.