Episode 202: The Byte Stops Here – Biden’s Cyber Agenda

In this episode of the Security Ledger Podcast (#202) we do a deep dive on President Biden’s cyber agenda with three experts on federal cyber policy and the challenges facing the new administration. Well, it almost didn’t happen, but on January 20, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. More than any president since Franklin Roosevelt, Biden inherited a country in the throws of a crisis. By the time of his inauguration, the COVID virus had killed upwards of 400,000 U.S. residents and tanked the  national economy. As the incidents of January 6 indicated, right wing militant groups are stirring and threatening to topple democratic institutions. Enter Solar Storm And, as if that wasn’t enough, the weeks between the November Election and Biden’s January inauguration brought to light evidence of what is perhaps the biggest cyber intrusion by a foreign adversary into US government networks, the so called Solar Storm hack, which has been widely attributed to the government of Russia.  Even before Solar Storm, Biden made clear as a candidate that a cyber security reset was needed and that cyber would be a top priority of his administration. The wide ranging hack of the US Treasury, Departments, of State, Justice, Defense and Homeland Security – among others – just added fuel to the roaring dumpster fire of Federal IT security.  But what will that reset look like? To understand a bit better what might be in store in the months ahead we devoted this episode of the podcast to interviewing three experts on federal IT security and cyber defense.  Rebuilding Blocks But first, before you can do a reset you need to understand what went wrong the first time around. In the case of federal cyber security, that’s not a short list. Spotlight Podcast: Taking a Risk-Based Approach to Election Security In our fist segment, we’re joined by two experts on cyber policy about the US governments struggles to get cyber security right, culminating with the problems seen during the Trump administration. Lauren Zabierek is the Executive Director of Cyber Project at Belfer Center For Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She’s joined by Paul Kolbe, the Director of the Intelligence Project at Belfer Center. The two joined me in the Security Ledger studios to talk about how the Biden Administration might rebuild the US government’s cyber function and who might populate key positions in the new administration.  Spotlight Podcast: QOMPLX CISO Andy Jaquith on COVID, Ransomware and Resilience To start off, I asked them what the biggest challenges are out of the gate for the new administration.  The Byte Stops Here: What Cyber Leadership Looks Like As Harry Truman famously said: the “Buck stops” at the President’s desk.