A report from the Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security provides five goals for protecting infrastructure from botnets and other automated threats.
In May 2017, the Trump administration issued Executive Order 13800, "Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure." Yesterday, one response to that order was made public as the secretaries of Commerce and Homeland Security jointly released "A Report to the President on Enhancing the Resilience of the Internet and Communications Ecosystem Against Botnets and Other Automated, Distributed Threats."
The report, at 51 pages, is a relatively concise look at the state of defense against botnets and similar threats. Reports such as these "are important in terms of being able to assess what the current state of cybersecurity is, what we're able to do, and what we need to be able to do about it," says Chris Pierson, CEO of Binary Sun Cyber Risk Advisors.
More than the specifics of the assessment, the level of the report is important, says Chris Wysopal, founder and CTO of CA Veracode. "This looks at the whole system development life cycle, from planning through end of life," he says. He argues that the level of conversation is critical because consumers buy products with gaping security holes — and will continue to do that until vendors make safe products an economic priority.
