In the past 18 months, IT departments in every industry have witnessed a great deal of change and shouldered a large share of the workload just to keep their organizations operating. They have been tasked with enabling huge swaths of the workforce to perform their jobs remotely, allowing for collaboration while maintaining security.
While those efforts proved to be largely successful, overnight decisions and accelerated innovations opened up new vulnerabilities, and threat actors have taken notice, lying in wait to exploit insufficiently protected data.
Recent ransomware attacks have caught the attention of IT professionals, news reporters and even the White House, with the Biden administration recently releasing an executive order emphasizing the importance of securing the nation’s critical infrastructure from cybersecurity threats.
Where Does the Federal Government Fit into Cybersecurity?
While the Biden administration has taken a firm stance on cybersecurity in its recent executive order, it provided little direction on how the government intends to prevent or punish cybercrimes. Questions remain as to what the government’s role should be. Should a federal body be established to investigate cyberattacks? Based on the scale of recent ransomware incidents, calls for such oversight are growing louder. Should companies be obligated to turn over data for access to foreign markets?
In a keynote briefing, Jen Easterly, the new director of the…
