Last month, the White House issued a new Executive Order (EO) aimed at protecting Americans’ personal data from falling into the hands of countries of concern. While data theft through cyber espionage has long been a clear threat and a focus of protection and disruption efforts by the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, the focus of the EO highlights that national data acquisition efforts are also taking place via commercial means.
While these means may be legal, they still serve the ultimate purpose of providing intelligence to potential adversaries and are worthy of skepticism. The new EO should make it more difficult for adversaries to buy up big data for the purposes of tracking dissidents, identifying intelligence officers, or targeting vulnerable individuals for extortion and blackmail, among other reasons. The EO is also a clear acknowledgment of the threat posed by these adversarial countries not just to individuals, but also to small and medium businesses, which are increasingly a target in the current cyber threat environment, as their data becomes more valuable for national security purposes.
Read more in our commentary here: https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/white-house-executive-order-data/710566/
