Biden announces measures to protect the US from cyber attacks, mainly Chinese

The president of United States, Joe Bidenannounced this Tuesday new measures to protect and improve the resistance of the country’s critical infrastructure in sectors such as energy and financial services against “current and future” dangers, among which public officials highlight Chinese cyber threats.

In this way, Biden signed a National Security Memorandum (NSM) that replaces the current legislation on infrastructure policy, in force since 2013, when it was published during the term of former President Barack Obama (2009-2017).

“Good investments require taking steps to manage risk, and in the case of our infrastructure, that means building resilience to all hazards from the beginning and by design.“The White House stated in a statement.

In the case of computer hacking, the US Department of Justice announced on January 31 an operation in which it dismantled hundreds of routers installed in the United States “kidnapped by hackers at the service of the Chinese Government.”

“Chinese hackers are targeting critical American civilian infrastructure, positioning themselves to cause real harm to American citizens and communities in the event of conflict,” FBI Director Christopher Wray warned at the time.

Now, the Biden Administration is using the President’s Investing in America Agenda to modernize a standard that is more than a decade old, in which there have been many technological advances such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Within the framework of this updated policy, Biden has allocated US$50 billion, specifically to strengthen infrastructure, distributed across 4,000 projects.

Among the measures, the new memo proposes that the Department of Homeland Security regularly present national risk management plans that summarize the Government’s efforts to protect critical infrastructure.

It also directs the United States Intelligence community to collect, produce and share information on this matter with federal departments and agencies, with state and local partners, and with owners and operators of critical infrastructure.

In this sense, the NSM, as stated in the statement, recognizes that the owners and operators of these private sector infrastructures are often “the first line of defense against adversaries targeting the most critical assets and systems” of the country, which raises its minimum security and resistance requirements.

“Resilience, especially that of our most sensitive assets and systems, is the cornerstone of defense and homeland security.“, stated the White House.