New US cybersecurity strategy will boost resilience

Significance

The strategy -- the first major revision since September 2018 -- seeks to usher in a new era of more aggressive regulation around cybersecurity. The administration intends to place greater responsibility on larger organisations to secure cyberspace and less on individuals and small businesses by incentivising the private sector to increase cybersecurity investment.

Impacts

• The immunity software companies have long enjoyed around vulnerabilities in their code may soon end.
• Washington is likely to allocate more resources to cybersecurity education and diversity-focused training programmes.
• Preventing ransomware attacks and arresting cybercriminals will be treated as a national security priority, not as cybercrime prevention.