White House: Cyber executive order is close, will be 'intertwined' with federal IT modernization

The Trump administration is "close" to unveiling its cybersecurity executive order and is carefully aligning its policy in that area with plans to modernize federal IT networks being drawn up by President Trump's son-in-law, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Robert Joyce said Monday in his first public comments since taking office.

The Trump administration is “close” to unveiling its cybersecurity executive order and is carefully aligning its policy in that area with plans for modernizing federal IT networks, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Robert Joyce said Monday in his first public comments since taking office.

“We must make sure that innovation and cybersecurity are intertwined,” Joyce told an international cybersecurity conference at Georgetown University. He said the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was working with White House tech policy aides Chris Liddell and  Reed Cordish on “a major effort” in Kushner’s newly minted Office of American Innovation to develop “approaches for the president’s consideration to modernize federal IT systems, retire outdated systems and move to shared services.”

White House staff would ensure that the two initiatives “are closely aligned,” Joyce said. “I get to participate in, my staff gets to participate in those meetings,” he said of the innovation office’s work on federal IT.

Asked whether modernization policy would be in the cybersecurity EO, as it was in a draft version posted online earlier this year, or whether, as reported at the weekend, it would be broken out into a separate EO being drafted by Kushner’s office, Joyce replied: “A little bit of both.”

The comments underline the policy complexities that the new administration, like its predecessors, has struggled with as it seeks to protect dozens of separate networks and hundreds of different services — email, cloud storage, voice and data — in the civilian government.

The cybersecurity EO was pulled just hours before it was due to be signed in January, and its fate has been  unclear since.

Monday Joyce said he didn’t want to be specific about timing for a roll-out, but added it was “close and nearby.”

“We want to make sure that the cybersecurity EO emerges with the time and attention it needs … and at the same time is sequenced with other things the administration is rolling out so we don’t distract from other important messages that are out there.”

Government

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• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

Technology

• European parliament members call for slowdown of Serbia’s EU entry over spyware use

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Threats

• Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

Policy

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Election official says Tina Peters would be consultant, won’t have access to election systems

• Bipartisan Senate bill aims to prepare energy sector for Q-Day