Biden Admin's Upcoming Cybersecurity Strategy Can Potentially Put Businesses, Software Providers On Collision Course

by Vandana Singh, Benzinga Editor
March 2, 2023 1:53 PM | 2 min read |
  • The Biden administration is poised to release a new national cybersecurity strategy that aims to make software companies liable for security hacks rather than the companies facing the hack.
  • The strategy is expected to be released today and was shared in advance with reporters and asserts that software makers must be "held liable when they fail to live up to the duty of care they owe consumers, businesses or critical infrastructure providers." 
  • "Responsibility must be placed on the stakeholders most capable of taking action to prevent bad outcomes, not on the end-users that often bear the consequences of insecure software nor on the open-source developer of a component that is integrated into a commercial product," according to the document.
  • President Joe Biden said the strategy "takes on the systemic challenge that too much of the responsibility for cybersecurity has fallen on individual users and small organizations." 
  • Senior US officials have publicly complained that technology companies, including Microsoft Corp MSFT and Twitter Inc, failed to secure user accounts sufficiently. 
  • Biden administration failed to advance legislation in its first two years to rein in the power of the biggest tech companies, including Alphabet Inc's GOOG GOOGL Google, Apple Inc APLE, Amazon.com Inc AMZN, and Meta Platforms Inc META. 
  • The senior official later told Bloomberg News that the administration would seek to capitalize on bipartisan support for greater cybersecurity. 
  • The official said there was room for collaboration with the software industry rather than confrontation.
  • The strategy will also seek to expand minimum cybersecurity requirements for critical infrastructure sectors without additional legislation.
  • Minimum cybersecurity requirements for pipelines and railways are already in place.
  • Image by Darwin Laganzon from Pixabay
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