Biden White House issues tighter cyber security guidelines for software vendors

The US President Joe Biden has issued guidance to ensure cyber security measures are followed in the software Federal agencies are using.

The new White House advice is an update on the ‘President’s Executive Order’ on ‘Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity’ and was signed by President Biden this week.

Before the update, Federal agencies only needed to prove that their software worked as advertised to match guidance criteria.

However, the US Executive voiced in its blog post that it has concerns about malicious intent from “foreign governments and criminal syndicates”, and warned that these hackers are “seeking ways to compromise [US] infrastructure.”

Back in 2020, a number of Federal agencies and large corporations were compromised by malicious code that was added to its software from software firm SolarWinds.

“This incident was one of a string of cyber intrusions and significant software vulnerabilities over the last two years,” the blog post reads.

Therefore, President Biden signed the Executive Order to ensure Federal agencies implement “rigorous, modern cyber security protections for our systems and data.”

The guidance, developed alongside experts from the public and private sector, as well as academia, urges agencies to use software that complies with secure software development standards, creates a self-attestation form for software producers and agencies, and allows the federal government to quickly identify security gaps when new vulnerabilities are discovered.