The Biden-Harris administration today released its National Cybersecurity Strategy which aims to shift the burden of defending the nation’s cyberspace to software companies and service providers.

Washington’s new cybersecurity defense plan also recognizes collaboration between the public and private sectors and with international allies and partners as essential to protecting the nation from cyber threats.

“We must rebalance the responsibility of defending cyberspace by shifting the burden of cybersecurity from individuals, small businesses and local governments to the organizations most capable and best positioned to reduce risk to us all,” the House said. White. said Today.

“The federal government will also deepen operational and strategic collaboration with vendors of software, hardware, and managed services with the ability to reshape the cyber landscape in favor of greater security and resilience.”

Its primary goals are to defend US critical infrastructure, disrupt malicious actors aiming to endanger US interests, invest strategically to establish a more secure digital ecosystem, and develop international partnerships to achieve common goals.

In addition to this and focusing on deflecting responsibility for security lapses onto software vendors, other important proposals include more aggressive campaigns to make malicious state-sponsored/financially motivated activities not cost-effective and inefficient and to ensure that US infrastructure is no longer used in attacks targeting organizations in the United States.

“Disruption campaigns must become so sustained and targeted that criminal cyber activity is rendered unprofitable and foreign government actors engaging in malicious cyber activity no longer view it as an effective means of achieving their goals,” the agency said. administration. said.

“All service providers must make reasonable efforts to secure the use of their infrastructure against abuse or other criminal behavior [to] make it harder for adversaries to abuse US-based infrastructure while protecting the privacy of individuals.”

The new strategy also highlights ransomware as a major threat and stresses that the administration “strongly discourages ransom payments” and will continue to target ransomware gangs operating from havens such as Russia, North Korea and the United States. Iran.

China and Russia named top threats to US national security

As for the biggest threats to national cybersecurity, the administration says China and Russia are the most active and aggressive states behind malicious activity targeting critical US infrastructure and assets.

“Over the past ten years, [China] has extended cyber operations beyond intellectual property theft to become our most advanced strategic competitor with the ability to threaten U.S. interests and dominate emerging technologies critical to global development,” the strategy reads.

“Russia remains a persistent cyber threat as it hones its cyber espionage, attack, influence, and disinformation capabilities to coerce sovereign nations, harbor transnational criminal actors, weaken U.S. alliances and partnerships, and subvert the system. international rules-based.”

Those who will coordinate efforts to implement this new cybersecurity strategy are the Office of the National Director of Cybersecurity (ONCD) in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), under the supervision of the National Security Council (NSC).

They will report annually to the President and the US Congress to highlight the effectiveness of the strategy. They will also provide federal agencies with annual guidance on cybersecurity budget priorities to ensure that its objectives are met.