Joe Biden asks the NSA to reinforce their digital defenses.

US President Joe Biden has asked national security agencies to reinforce their cybersecurity by enhancing their network security as an intelligence claim that Russian hackers could be on to US organizations especially after what happened with Ukrainian bodies earlier this week.

Biden insists NSA, FBI and DHS for increased vigilance

The memorandum document asks national security systems and networks to follow the same executive order given to civil federal agencies and contractors after the SolarWinds espionage campaign and ransomware attacks on Colonial Pipeline.

The Biden memo states “Modernizing our cybersecurity defenses and protecting all federal networks is a priority for the Biden Administration, and this National Security Memorandum raises the bar for the cybersecurity of our most sensitive systems”.

As per the memorandum given to NSA, the entity has some regulatory powers over Homeland Security Department and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). According to the document, the Pentagon and 18 member clandestine community would need to identify their national systems and report cyber incidents to the NSA.

The nations top electronic spy agency will lay bids for the operational directives mandating actions against cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Also, the NSA and DHS should share their tasks with each other to improve their productivity and security.

The threat from Russia could be imminent

Biden was concerned about the Ukraine situation and hence had to pass this memo as Russia could have another offensive operation on Ukraine in coming days. Last week, the CISA, FBI and NSA made an announcement about Russian state-sponsored hackers and their target could be critical infrastructures.

Also, the attack Ukraine as observed by Microsoft had a ransomware motive but ransom recovery wasn’t intended instead the malware strain looked like a wiper that will erase data and make the infected devices inoperable. It comes with increased risk to government agencies, NGOs and enterprises located or has operations in Ukraine. The country is already suspecting Moscow should be behind these ransomware attacks.

Coming back to the memo, the document demands agencies to secured the cross domain solutions that move data from classified systems to unclassified or vice versa. The NSA will be validating these protocols and ensuring proper security hardening is in place including MFA and Zero-Trust approach assuming that hackers are already within their network.

So instead of staying confident and building proactive security measures to prevent a cyberattack, the memo requests entities to assume their is already a threat actor who has gained access to your devices and build your defenses accordingly.

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