The DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, under the Biden administration, has issued a mandate requiring federal agencies to mitigate many known software and hardware vulnerabilities. Not only is the agency requiring that the vulnerabilities be fixed but they’ve also provided the technical details in terms of what needs to be fixed and how.
This is a significant order give how expansive it is, involving both the internal systems of the government agencies themselves as well as vulnerabilities that exist online. As a result of many cyber attacks that the U.S. has faced in recent years, from the SolarWinds intrusion to the Chinese’s hacking into Microsoft systems, this directive was aimed at setting forth standards for how the federal government manages security vulnerabilities. Through this system, the government seems to hope to want to improve its classifications for precisely what technical flaws have been and are still susceptible to being compromised by adversaries and hackers.
