Trump urged to boost security in first 100 days

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has urged president-elect Donald Trump to take action to strengthen cybersecurity efforts within 100 days of taking office.

In order to safeguard growth of the digital economy, the next president must strengthen collaboration between the public and private sectors before, during and after attacks, according to the NIST Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.

The commission was established by President Barack Obama to make recommendations to strengthen cybersecurity in the public and private sectors.

As well as closer public-private collaboration, the 90-page report calls for international engagement and discusses the role consumers must play in enhancing digital economy.

NIST has made recommendations focused on six main imperatives — infrastructure, investment, consumer education, workforce capabilities, government operations as well as requirements for a fair and open global digital economy.

Examples include creating a new agency to serve as a cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection agency, taking public-private action to improve digital identity management and launching a cybersecurity awareness and engagement campaign targeted at consumers.

As part of the latter initiative, NIST recommends creating the equivalent of a cybersecurity ‘nutrition label’ for ICT products and services.

NIST also recommends establishing a workforce program to train 100,000 new cybersecurity professionals, as well as initiatives focused on emerging areas including the IoT.

The report comes in the wake of a series of high-profile recent cybersecurity incidents, such as the Mirai botnet of infected IoT devices and the Mirai-linked attack (http://www.technologydecisions.com.au/content/security/news/failed-malware-attack-disrupts-internet-services-in-germany-684774726) that led to a significant disruption of internet services in Germany.

Image courtesy of Gage Skidmore under CC