Fight Against Cyber Crime: Biden Directs Federal Agencies to Fix Hundreds of Cyber Flaws

The Biden administration has directed nearly all federal agencies to patch hundreds of security flaws, some of which were discovered more than a decade ago.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a new binding operational mandate on Wednesday that gives federal agencies six months to remedy more than 300 security flaws that it has identified as posing “substantial risk” to their networks. According to the directive, agencies have only two weeks to patch the most recent flaws from 2021.

These security flaws, some of which stretch back to 2014 and 2015, constitute a “common attack vector” for hackers targeting federal entities, according to CISA.

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The instruction, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, applies to most civilian federal agencies, but makes exceptions for military networks handled by the Defense Department or the intelligence community, which are managed separately.

Federal agencies are generally responsible for managing their cybersecurity initiatives, such as the distribution of security fixes. Since 2015, federal agencies have been required to remedy “serious” security flaws within a month of public disclosure, and this was increased in 2019 to include patches for high-severity flaws as well.

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However, the government’s own inspector has stated that several federal agencies are still struggling with cybersecurity fundamentals.

According to the Journal, many of the bugs in the new directive were previously undocumented, a subtle hint to how seemingly minor bugs can yet cause major damage or disruption if exploited.

“The Directive lays forth clear criteria for federal civilian agencies to take urgent action to strengthen their vulnerability management processes and significantly reduce their risk to cyber assaults,” CISA Director Jen Easterly said in a statement.

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“While this Directive applies only to federal civilian agencies, we know that groups all around the country, especially critical infrastructure institutions, are being targeted utilising the same vulnerabilities. As a result, it is vital that every entity implement this Directive and prioritise mitigation of vulnerabilities listed in CISA’s public catalogue,” Easterly stated.

Rep. Jim Langevin, chairman of the House Armed Services’ cyber subcommittee, stated that the CISA mandate “would go a long way toward bolstering network security and improving our federal cyber hygiene.”

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