Fighting Against Cyber Threats: Another Step in the Right Direction (Week 5)

For years cyber threats have been able to conduct attacks against the citizens and organizations of the United States with little to no consequences for their criminal acts.  As the attacks keep occurring in frequency and sophistication, all U.S. citizens and companies can do is develop and implement a good cyber defense.  Despite their efforts, cyber threats continue to persist and can be quite lucrative when they are successful.

On April 1^st of this year the U.S. government decided to take a more active approach in the fight against cyber threats by creating a tool that can be used to strike back against the individuals and entities conducting cyberattacks.  This new tool that will be used to fight cyber threats is an Executive Order.

So what does this new Executive Order do to help U.S. citizens and companies fight against cyber threats?  The Executive Order really does not give U.S. citizens or companies any power to fight against cyber threats.  On the other hand, it gives the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Attorney General and Secretary of State, the authority to impose sanctions on individuals and entities that have been determined to be responsible for or aided in committing cyberattacks against U.S. government agencies, organizations, and/or citizens (Daniel, 2015).

Many will inevitably question the ability of the Executive Order to make an impact on cyber threats.  It is probably safe to assume that challengers of the order will have strong evidence to support their position and opinions.  However, they are not seeing the big picture.  The main point to take away from the issuing of this Executive Order is that the U.S. government is and will continue to actively pursue new avenues to fight cyber threats.  Issuing this Executive Order give the U.S. government another tool to use to make it more difficult for cyber threats to commit and profit from their cyberattacks.

The inclusion of the Executive Order into the existing tools at the government’s disposal to fight back against cyber threats does not mean we should all sit back and let the U.S. government do all the work.  We still have to do our part.  This means we, individuals and organizations, still have to ensure we maintain and continue to improve our defenses.  It also means that we have to become better at identifying, investigating, and reporting cyberattacks so that information can be relayed and used to assist with imposing sanctions against any identified individuals or entities.

References

Daniel, M. (2015, April 1). Our latest tool to combat cyber attacks: What you need to know [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/04/01/our-latest-tool-combat-cyber-attacks-what-you-need-know