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Cyber attacks and data breaches have become the day to day occurrences. So, to curb this daily dosage of cyber-attacks, the White House has asked from the Congress a donation of $19 billion in order to strengthen the walls of security that can protect U.S. agencies from this constant barrage of attacks.
Recently in a call with press reporters, Micheal Daniel, who is the special assistant to the Office of the President and the coordinator of cybersecurity affairs, said that the recent threats to cyber security had managed to “outpace their current efforts”.
Outlining the President’s recent plans and efforts to tackle the crisis, he added that “criminals, terrorists, and countries” who posed severe threats to the security systems had taken for granted that climbing over the obstacles online would be easier than doing so in person. The statement released by the White House also said that as an increasing amount of “sensitive data” is stored online, these attacks can cause irreparable and significant damage in the coming future.
Hence, as a part of President Obama’s federal budget proposal, the White House will be seeking to pour some money into dealing with the matter of long-term national cyber security strategy. This action plan would increase the spending on cyber security by about 35%, and lead to a much more improved IT network. Funds worth 3.1 billion dollars would be set aside for the U.S. agencies to upgrade their online infrastructure. And a new body would be created to look after the developments across all such federal agencies.
As stated by information officer, Tony Scott, the budget would also include an investment of 62 million dollars to meet the acute shortage of skilled men and education professionals in the field of cyber security. The funds would be used to source various scholarship programs for Americans who have a technologically oriented mindset.
Such developments have come in the light of embarrassing data breaches that have affected over 21 million people in the United States of America. Confidential details belonging to millions of employees have also been tampered with. Case in point would be the hack into the Office of Personal Management that had tampered with the credentials of many employees.
Rep. Ted Lieu, a member of the House Budget committee, who had been a vocal critic of how the government had handled the breach, was satisfied with the proposals made in the federal budget proposal. He said that he was very “excited£ with the interest that the administration had shown in cyber security and said that he was “going to do everything” that he could on the Budget Committee to make sure that the proposal was passed.
