The Orange County Perspective – commentary
Jeff Sterns | Orange County Tech Industry Resident
By Christopher Bing and Nandita Bose | Reuters
President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday that advances federal cybersecurity capabilities and encourages improvements in digital security standards across the private sector which has been hit by a spate of high-profile cyber attacks.
What a joke! Our country lacks the skilled labor to fill such positions because our schools don’t produce top-tier thinkers. You need top tier to protect against people that have nothing to lose and made it their mission to attack and destroy. Even if you could source such people, do you think a government employee cares more than a desperate hacker? So, you send out a Request for Bid (RFB) and we have another government contract/contractor! I’m not anti-Trump or anti-Biden, I’m pro America for the record.
The executive order establishes a series of initiatives designed to better equip federal agencies with cybersecurity tools. It follows a cyberattack against the Colonial Pipeline that caused some internal computer systems to be disabled with ransomware. This led Colonial to shut the pipeline, triggering fuel shortages and panic buying in the southeastern United States.
On Wednesday, Atlanta-based Colonial said it “initiated the restart of pipeline operations at 5 p.m. ET.”
An executive order!!! wooooo haaaaaa! No one cares, trust me. Technology-wise, the US is in a deep pool and it doesn’t know how to swim. Unless the US contracts with the most powerful tech force I know, Amazon/Google (maybe), it won’t happen. China actually has the best cybersecurity people on the planet.
The order also requires that software companies selling to the government maintain certain cybersecurity standards in their products and report whether they themselves have been compromised by hackers. The requirement was first reported by Reuters in March.
So let’s look at this. The government loves to govern, it would stand to figure that they would immediately impose new regulatory constraints on software vendors, the likes of which will shake the software industry and disrupt competition substantially. Added regulation means thicker government, it should never be thrown around as a solution without serious consideration paid to impact.
A senior administration official described the executive order as having a “very significant” impact on the government’s ability to detect and respond to hacking incidents.
Really? Really? Do I care about anyone in government that is a senior administration official? If you’re a lifetime government worker drawing a pension and being a yes man/woman, do I or should I respect anything that comes out of your mouth? They’re wrong.
The pipeline cyberattack is the latest in a string of high-profile cyber incidents against U.S. companies and government agencies over the last six months.
In December, a Russian supply chain hacking operation became public which burrowed into nine federal agencies. More recently, the government has been investigating a different hacking campaign with ties to China that affected five civilian agencies.
Oh! There we go, ties to China! See I told you they have the best in the business.
“It’s hard to learn from each incident and ensure that broadly government and companies have information to protect themselves,” said the official. “So, we have pushed the authority as far as we could and said anybody doing business with the US government will have to share incidents so that we can use that information to protect Americans.”
Again, you can’t walk into a street fight from the tennis club and expect to survive.
Source: Orange County Register
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