Cyberattacks Increasing but Biden Executive Order Doesn’t Go Far Enough

The United States has been painfully reminded this week of its vulnerability to cyberattacks. “They cut off a pipeline to the Eastern Seaboard for days, tried to poison a Florida water-treatment plant, held hospital IT systems hostage and stole an undetermined trove of information in the SolarWinds hack” reports Fox News. All the while, “the Biden administration searches for a way to respond.”

Biden didn’t particularly look very strong to the world when he consistently said China wasn’t a threat and that he was prepared to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal on the campaign trail. The world has taken notice and terror groups of all kinds are testing how far they can push the administration.

On Wednesday, Biden signed an executive order to strengthen U.S cyberdefenses and bolster the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA” reports Fox News. Experts say the technology to prevent many of these attacks already exists, but attacks are on the rise.

Targets include major infrastructure installations such as transportation hubs, energy facilities and utility companies and to most, attacks are seen as acts of war. In a statement, the White House said, “U.S. public and private sector entities increasingly face sophisticated malicious cyber activity from both nation-state actors and cybercriminals.”

“These incidents share commonalities, including insufficient cybersecurity defenses that leave public and private sector entities more vulnerable to incidents” the statement continued. Fox News states the Biden administration “also called on private companies to increase spending on their own cybersecurity, but it stopped short of bolstering offensive capabilities.”

Representative Denver Riggleman (R-VA) who has 20 years of experience in intelligence for the military, the National Security Agency and in private industry says Biden’s executive actions do not go nearly far enough.

Riggleman suggests increasing spending for offensive cyber capabilities, and use them to respond to future attacks, particularly those from Russia, China, Iran or North Korea. “We need to pick the first country that f— with us in a cyber way and bring them to their knees,” he told Fox News.

“We choose a target that we have access to, and once we identify that target, we take out that target – and then we [should] take it another step…if you want to come in and hit the Colonial Pipeline, which only serves several states, we’re going to hit your major hub and want to take down half your country for a week” he added.