President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday in an attempt to bolster US cybersecurity defenses after a number of devastating hacks, including the Colonial pipeline attack, revealed vulnerabilities across business and government.
“Recent cybersecurity incidents… are a sobering reminder that US public and private sector entities increasingly face sophisticated malicious cyber activity from both nation-state actors and cyber criminals,” the White House said.
Under the order, federal agencies will be required to introduce multi-factor authentication to their systems and encrypt all data within six months in a bid to make it harder for hackers to penetrate their IT infrastructure.
