President Barack Obama signed two executive orders on cybersecurity on Tuesday, designed to modernize IT systems that are vulnerable to attack and to protect the confidential and personal information that the government keeps on its citizens.
The executive orders will create a 12-member Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, made up of business, technology, national security and law enforcement leaders that will make recommendations to both the public and private sectors, according to USA Today. The panel is to issue a report to the president by Dec. 1.
The executive orders will also create a Federal Privacy Council, bringing together chief privacy officers from 25 federal agencies to coordinate efforts to protect the vast amounts of data the federal government collects and maintains about taxpayers and citizens.
The executive orders are part of the administration's cybersecurity budget proposal for 2017, which at $19 billion is a 35 percent increase over the level that Congress approved for 2016.
The government's Cybersecurity National Action Plan fact sheet, released Tuesday by the White House's Office of the Press Secretary, also calls for a new federal chief information security officer to direct cybersecurity across the federal government, as well as more training and shared resources among government agencies, 48 dedicated teams to respond to attacks, and student loan forgiveness to help recruit top technical talent.
"More and more, keeping America safe is not just about more tanks or more airplanes," Obama told reporters at the White House. "We also have to bolster our security online. As we've seen in the past few years, and just in the past few days, cyber threats pose a danger not only to our national security but our economic security."
The launch comes after disclosures last year that personal data from some 20 million federal employees, contractors and others had been leaked in a massive breach at the Office of Personnel Management, as reported by the New York Times.
