Cybersecurity practitioners are voicing concerns over a recent executive order issued by the White House that guts requirements for: securing software the government uses, punishing people who compromise sensitive networks, preparing new encryption schemes that will withstand attacks from quantum computers, and other existing controls.
The executive order (EO), issued on June 6, reverses several key cybersecurity orders put in place by President Joe Biden, some as recently as a few days before his term ended in January. A statement that accompanied Donald Trump’s EO said the Biden directives “attempted to sneak problematic and distracting issues into cybersecurity policy” and amounted to “political football.”
Pro-business, anti-regulation
Specific orders Trump dropped or relaxed included ones mandating (1) federal agencies and contractors adopt products with quantum-safe encryption as they become available in the marketplace, (2) a stringent Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF) for software and services used by federal agencies and contractors, (3) the adoption of phishing-resistant regimens such as the WebAuthn standard for logging into networks used by contractors and agencies, (4) the implementation new tools for securing Internet routing through the Border Gateway Protocol, and (5) the encouragement of digital forms of identity.
