On Tuesday, President Barack Obama asked the Congress to provide $3.1 billion to modernize the government's ancient computer systems to protect it from cyber-attacks. This effort from President Obama is in line with boosting US cyber security.
ABC News reported that the US president said that some infrastructure is downright archaic, with its Social Security Administration utilizing systems that are from the 1960's. Obama stated that these old systems are vulnerable to hacking. The president wanted to hire a new chief information security officer whose salary would be paltry compared to those paid by big companies.
Obama signed an executive order establishing a federal council to promote best and most secure practices when protecting individual employees' information. He also wanted to ensure that the government data will be protected from all hackers by convening a meeting of his national security team along with the best cyber security experts to discuss the new initiative. According to CNN, the US president said that one of the biggest gaps between the public sector and the private sector is in the IT space, which makes everyone's information open to hacking.
"This is not an ideological issue. It doesn't matter if there's a Democratic president or a Republican president," Obama said.
James Clapper, Obama's director of national intelligence warned everyone about cyber threats and how it could lead to widespread vulnerabilities in civilian infrastructures and US government data. Reuters reported that the US president's initiative demands for a more than one-third increase from the $14 billion appropriated this year.
After a series of embarrassing high-profile breaches, the US federal government has been working to secure its system. While some of the government's best cybersecurity advisers acknowledge the new initiative won't entirely eradicate further breaches, they also recognized that these steps are very important.
