The White House rolled out a highly anticipated executive order on Thursday to combat a rising level of sophisticated attacks targeting U.S. government agencies, critical infrastructure providers and high-profile individuals by state-linked threat groups and other malign actors.
The executive order will give the U.S. more authority to level sanctions against malicious actors that have disrupted hospitals and other critical providers.
Federal authorities also plan to leverage the government’s $100 billion in annual IT spending to make sure technology companies develop more secure software.
The order follows a rash of state-linked campaigns, including the hack of nine telecom companies by Salt Typhoon as well as a separate attack against the Treasury Department connected to the compromise of BeyondTrust customers. The recent attacks have all been linked to hackers backed by the People’s Republic of China.
“The goal is to make it costly and harder for China, Russia, Iran and ransomware criminals to hack and to also signal that America means business when it comes to protecting our businesses and our…
