White House Releases New National Cybersecurity Strategy

Today, the White House released a new National Cybersecurity Strategy, which aims to identify the cyber challenges facing the country and offer solutions for improving the security and resilience of federal and private sector networks and systems. The strategy underscores that robust collaboration, particularly between the public and private sectors, is essential to securing cyberspace.

The strategy is comprised of five overarching pillars, each of which consists of a series of actions for accomplishing the identified strategic objective. Pillar I is to “Defend Critical Infrastructure.” Some of the supporting activities for this pillar includes expanding the use of minimum cybersecurity requirements in critical sectors to ensure public safety, enabling public-private collaboration, and modernizing federal networks. Notably, as part of this pillar, the strategy states Sector Risk Management Agencies (SRMAs) have day-to-day responsibility and sector-specific expertise to improve security and resilience within their infrastructure sectors. In turn, SRMAs support individual infrastructure owners and operators, sector-focused information sharing and analysis centers (ISACs), and similar organizations to facilitate cyber defense operations across vast and complex sectors. The other four pillars include “Disrupt and Dismantle Threat Actors,” “Shape Market Forces to Drive Security and Resilience,” “Invest in a Resilient Future,” and “Forge International Partnerships to Pursue Shared Goals.” Ultimately, the goal of the strategy is to make the U.S. digital ecosystem more defensible, resilient, and values-aligned. Access the full strategy below.