The American Cyber Revolution

The more ease and dependency the internet slithers into our lives, the more obscure parasites linger on with it; menacing our privacy and digital wellbeing. Pursuant to its role of providing safe and secure cyberspace. The current President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed into law two new pieces of legislation that will facilitate cyber coordination between state and local governments and enhance the federal cyber workforce. These measures by policymakers are prompted to combat the fallout from herculean cyber-attacks such as Solarwinds and Colonial pipeline which plagued the 2021 and showed the world just how disastrous a cyber attack can be and that so on the one of the best and secured country networks of the world.

The Biden administration signed off 2 legislation namely

• State and Local Government Cyber security Act: the act aims to permit CISA (Cyber security and infrastructure Security Agency) to provide state and local actors better access to upgraded cyber security tools and measures. The act also intends to amplify the ambit of a multi state information sharing and analysis centre to aid in response and prevention of future cyber incidents. The same has been introduced to improve flow of information among various law enforcement agencies.
• Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Program Act: aims to establish a rotational cyber workforce development program covering numerous agencies of government to compete with the more lucrative and robust private sector. The program grants the ability to cyber security professionals to rotate or switch through the federal governments and civil agencies, effectively allowing them to sample jobs. This freedom to switch jobs allows the professionals to explore new departments and acquire new skills and provides exposure to new emerging cyber atrocities such as cross border adversaries or criminal groups attempting to sabotage a nation’s network and even those who are involved in illicit trade and activities over the darknet.

Salient Features of Acts

1. Rotation of Professionals: this allows cyber security personnel to explore different jobs within and outside the government, enabling them to gain new skills and thus empowering innovation.
2. Better Skill development: the legislation allowed flow of talents between governments and civil entities enabling cyber security personnel to develop a new set of skills and techniques essential to combat emerging cyber threats.
3. Better exposure to cyber adversaries: the legislation provided job switching and skill development which in turn enabled cyber security professionals to gain better exposure and an opportunity to learn about new emerging cyber threats to combat them with greater efficiency.

The bipartisan piece of legislation ultimately provides better coordination among different sectors of government and calls for greater support of civil entities in tackling new and upcoming cyber threats. These changes could be a boon to the American cyber landscape and will play a significant role in securing netizens from unknown cyber adversaries. The acts will be substantial to ease the flow of critical information among various state and federal law enforcement agencies thus allowing faster investigation and apprehension of criminals.