Cyber security white house

Federal cybersecurity has "regressed" since 2019 due to factors including the lack of centralized cyber leadership at the White House, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released Tuesday. The watchdog agency included boosting federal cybersecurity as a key issue in its “ high risk" report to Congress, which outlines a wide array of areas where the federal government is both succeeding and falling behind. “Federal agencies and other entities need to take urgent actions to implement a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, perform effective oversight, secure federal systems, and protect cyber critical infrastructure, privacy, and sensitive data,” GAO wrote. ADVERTISEMENT It said the nation’s cybersecurity need “significant attention,” pointing in particular to “missing important characteristics” in the Trump administration’s National Cyber Strategy, released in 2018, and the lack of an “officially appointed central leader” on cybersecurity at … [Read more...] about Government watchdog finds federal cybersecurity has ‘regressed’ in recent years

REUTERS: A government report published on Wednesday outlines a cyberwar doomsday plan and recommends Washington make sweeping changes to address other cybersecurity challenges facing the country. The report, authored by a U.S. government-funded bipartisan group, named the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, advises that Congress pass a series of bills to create new or reorganize existing government offices to improve the nation's cyber defenses. It also offers other initiatives that the authors say could bring foreign allies and private sector partners closer to the U.S. government on cybersecurity efforts. "The idea with nuclear deterrence is you've either deterred it or you haven't," Suzanne Spaulding, a commission member and former senior homeland security official, said about the report's findings last week at a D.C. event. "With cyber you're trying to reduce the level of malicious cyber activity. This is not going to be 'we're going to eliminate cyber.' This is about … [Read more...] about US government commission rolls out doomsday plan for cyberwar

The Biden administration sanctioned seven mid- and senior-level Russian officials on Tuesday, along with more than a dozen businesses and other entities, over a nearly fatal nerve-agent attack on opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his subsequent jailing. The measures, emphasizing the use of the Russian nerve agent as a banned chemical weapon, marked the Biden administration’s first sanctions against associates of President Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader was an intimate and favourite of President Donald Trump even amid covert Russian hacking and social media campaigns aimed at destabilizing the U.S. The government officials included at least four whom Navalny’s supporters had directly asked the West to penalize, saying they were most involved in targeting him and other dissidents and journalists. However, the U.S. list did not include any of Russia’s most powerful businesspeople and bankers, oligarchs whom Navalny has long said the West would have to sanction to get the … [Read more...] about US sets sanctions over Russia opposition leader’s poisoning

WASHINGTON: The United States on Tuesday (May 2) imposed sanctions to punish Russia for what it described as Moscow's attempt to poison opposition leader Alexei Navalny with a nerve agent last year, in President Joe Biden's most direct challenge yet to the Kremlin. The sanctions against seven senior Russian officials, among them the head of its FSB security service, and on 14 entities marked a sharp departure from former President Donald Trump's reluctance to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin. Navalny, 44, fell ill on a flight in Siberia in August and was airlifted to Germany, where doctors concluded he had been poisoned with a nerve agent. The Kremlin has denied any role in his illness and said it had seen no proof he was poisoned. Navalny was arrested in January on his return from Germany following treatment for poisoning with what many Western countries say was a military-grade nerve agent. He was jailed on Feb 2 for parole violations on what he says were politically … [Read more...] about US and EU impose sanctions on Russia over Navalny poisoning, jailing

They say that “Behind every successful man, there is a strong woman.” They’re wrong. The truth is, behind any successful community — any successful people, or any successful nation — there are countless unheralded and unnamed strong women. All of us have witnessed women standing in the gap and on the front lines, molding and shaping the moments of our lives. As Women’s History Month unfolds, we should pause to consider how women in America have helped to shape our history, individually and as a nation. I think about my grandmothers. Both were sharecroppers who lost their husbands at an early age. They spent their lives picking other people’s cotton and cleaning other people’s houses. Despite their constant struggles, they managed to raise their own children, their grandchildren — and other people’s children. ADVERTISEMENT My grandmothers were frontliners of change. I think about my mother working two jobs for most of my childhood, never letting us see her worry about … [Read more...] about In America, women are frontliners of change