Grant Gross
Senior Writer

Trump stresses cybersecurity but postpones executive order

news
Jan 31, 20172 mins

The president says he'll hold department heads more responsible for network security

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Credit: Jette Carr/DOD

U.S. President Donald Trump called on government agencies to better protect their networks, but he delayed signing an executive order to kick-start a government-wide review of cybersecurity policy.

A draft copy of the order, leaked earlier, would give the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security 60 days to submit a list of recommendations to protect U.S. government and private networks. 

Trump had been scheduled to sign the executive order Tuesday but canceled shortly before it was due to happen.

Instead of signing the executive order, Trump told reporters he’ll hold cabinet secretaries and agency heads “totally accountable” for the security of their networks. US. agencies “certainly” don’t have as much cybersecurity protections as they need, he said during a short briefing Tuesday.

“We must protect federal networks and data,” Trump added. “We operate these networks on behalf of the American people and they are very important. We will empower these agencies to modernize their IT systems for better security and other uses.”

The cybersecurity plan will also focus on protecting U.S. critical infrastructure, such as power plants and electrical grids, Trump said. Electrical grid security is a problem, “but we’ll have it solved relatively soon,” he promised.

During the briefing, Trump took a shot at the Democratic National Committee, which hackers infiltrated during the presidential campaign.

“Despite how they spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars more money than we did, the Democratic National Committee was hacked successfully, very successfully, and terribly successfully,” he said. “And the Republican National Committee was not hacked. Meaning it was hacked, but they failed. We had a very strong defense system against hacking.”

Grant Gross

Grant Gross, a senior writer at CIO, is a long-time IT journalist who has focused on AI, enterprise technology, and tech policy. He previously served as Washington, D.C., correspondent and later senior editor at IDG News Service. Earlier in his career, he was managing editor at Linux.com and news editor at tech careers site Techies.com. As a tech policy expert, he has appeared on C-SPAN and the giant NTN24 Spanish-language cable news network. In the distant past, he worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. A finalist for Best Range of Work by a Single Author for both the Eddie Awards and the Neal Awards, Grant was recently recognized with an ASBPE Regional Silver award for his article “Agentic AI: Decisive, operational AI arrives in business.”

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