The White House unveils its new cybersecurity strategy

On Thursday, the White House unveiled a new national cybersecurity strategy that sets out long-term goals to enable individuals, governments and businesses to operate securely in the digital realm.As part of the strategy, the Biden administration is calling for comprehensive federal regulation to make the online domain more secure from hackers, including shifting responsibility for consumer cybersecurity to public and private companies.“Our rapidly changing world requires a more focused, coordinated and well-resourced approach to cyber defense. We face a complex and dangerous environment as state and non-state actors develop and implement new plans and actions that threaten our interests, the State Department said in a statement released the same day. “At the same time, next-generation technologies are maturing at an accelerated rate, creating new avenues for innovation and increasing digital interdependence.”The National Cybersecurity Strategy places the largest, most capable, and best placed players in the digital ecosystem – whether public or private – with much of the burden of mitigating cyber risk.“Cyberspace does not exist as an end in itself, but as a tool to achieve our highest aspirations,” the document stresses.The administration’s strategy revolves around five fundamental principles: protecting critical infrastructure; destruction and liquidation of threat subjects; strengthening market forces for security and resilience; investing in a sustainable future; and building international partnerships to achieve common goals.The strategy was developed in the wake of a number of major cyberattacks, including the 2021 attack on the Colonial Pipeline and the cyberhacking of federal government offices in 2019-2020.