US to push more aggressive cyber security policy

Washington Examiner:

From the president on down, leading members of the Trump administration suggest their work on cybersecurity has been a rescue mission from the Obama days. Yet President Trump's new strategy is earning high marks — along with a few inevitable brickbats — from veterans of the previous administration.

“We inherited a cybersecurity mess … they ignored cybersecurity threats,” Vice President Mike Pence said recently.

The Obama officials, while disputing the notion that they left a "mess," said the new National Cybersecurity Strategy represents a continuation of a policy arc based on consensus and collaboration between government and industry that began with President George W. Bush, ran through the Obama administration and is being followed today.

“I think the strategy largely continues the previous administration's strategy, at least with respect to the Department of Homeland Security mission, and moves it forward in important ways,” said Suzanne Spaulding, who managed the cyber portfolio at DHS during the Obama years.

The Trump strategy includes an enhanced role for DHS in securing federal systems, paying more attention to supply-chain risks, and a commitment to global norms of behavior backed by the willingness to take offensive action in cyberspace spearheaded by the military.

The strategy is intended to promote “communications infrastructure and Internet connectivity that is open, interoperable, reliable, and secure,” along with protecting and promoting “Internet freedom” globally. And it delves into wide-ranging issues such as protecting intellectual property, free flow of data across borders and building the cyber workforce.

National security adviser John Bolton, who unveiled the plan last month, emphasized the new flexibility military leaders will have under the strategy, which in a classified annex addresses the recent repeal of the Obama-era Presidential Policy Directive-20 oversight process for approving offensive cyber actions. Bolton said “we will respond offensively as well as defensively” to cyber attacks, adding, “Our hands are not tied like they were in the Obama administration.”
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I sense more of a willingness to engage in counter attacks by the US and its allies.  That is probably the only real deterrent to future attacks.  US allies are also looking at counterattacks against Russia and other cyber threats from Iran and China as well as North Korea.  The UK has threatened to shut down the electric grid in Moscow in response to cyber attacks in the future.  There is a sense that the West has been too passive in dealing with these attacks in teh past.