President Biden’s Final Cyber Security Executive Order 

Uploaded on 2025-01-17 in INTELLIGENCE-Hot Spots-China, GOVERNMENT-National, FREE TO VIEW

Outgoing US President Biden will issue a cyber security Executive Order (EO) focusing on the recent damaging Chinese online attacks against US organisations.  

The proposed measures address growing threats from Chinese-linked cyber operations and criminal cyber attacks, which have targeted critical infrastructure, government emails, and major telecoms firms. Under the draft order, contractors must adhere to stricter secure software development practices and provide documentation to be verified by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The ambitious final executive order requires 52 agency actions to bolster cyber protections and counter adversaries, including a new plan to address increasing digital identity theft. China’s offensive hacking campaigns has influence this EO.  

China’s aggressive global cyber activities have challenged governments in Australia, New Zealand and many others, with no detectable change in China's behaviour.  

Indeed, CISA's Director, Jen Easterly, has warned that the US must do more to protect against cyber threats posed by attackers linked to China. In fact, Chinese industrial espionage is estimated to be costing the US economy between USD $225 billion and USD $600 billion. Consequently, if the EO serves to reduce the volume of data theft there could be major financial savings.

Typically, application of economic sanctions have been the initial punitive responses from US presidents to punish Chinese entities allegedly tied to cyber espionage activities.  Hover, these appear to have had no deterrent effect and have been met with equal Chinese resistance.

Critics of the Biden administration say that it has had four years to introduce tougher measures - when they might have had a greater impact in strengthening US preparedness - instead of delaying until its final days in power.

Furthermore, aside from the fact that EOs can be repealed by succeeding presidents, something that Biden did with Trump when he came into office, the idea of instituting these mandates when the most senior officials that helped put it together may be replaced in the new Administration seems to be counter-productive.

US national cyber security is should be a non-partisan issue, given that no administration of either political party has gotten it right.  This is because cyber security is an evolutionary progression and not a program that can be ejected and replaced easily and it seems likely that President-elect Trump will continue to promote stronger cyber security measures.

The measure proposed in the draft EO will most likely carried over by the Trump administration and it is hard to argue against measures that strengthen zero-trust just because they were initiated by the opposing party. However, one facet of the EO that could likely face a setback is the section that will purportedly grant the Department of Homeland Security and CISA too much more power.

While President Biden’s efforts at the conclusion of his term are commendable, EOs can be rescinded as quickly as they are implemented, and these efforts would likely have been strengthened by working jointly with with the incoming Trump administration to ensure that they align with the direction of future policy.

Right now, it is unclear how much of Joe Biden’s last-minute executive order will be embraced by Donald Trump

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