President Obama extends cybersecurity emergency
President Barack Obama has extended the national emergency on cyber attacks that he originally declared one year earlier, in April 2015.
The original executive order put in place a national emergency to deal with “malicious cyber-enabled activities” and was to be in place for a year.
According to the [link url=”https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/01/executive-order-blocking-property-certain-persons-engaging-significant-m” title=”original declaration in 2015″]: “I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, find that the increasing prevalence and severity of malicious cyber-enabled activities originating from, or directed by persons located, in whole or in substantial part, outside the United States constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with this threat.” — [link url=”https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/01/executive-order-blocking-property-certain-persons-engaging-significant-m” title=”Read the entire executive order”] from April 1, 2015.
Continuation
President Obama subsequently released a notice on March 29, 2016 signifying the continuation of the state of emergency.
According to [link url=”https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/03/29/notice-cyber-enabled-activities-emergency-continuation” title=”emergency continuation declaration”]: “These significant malicious cyber-enabled activities continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. For this reason, the national emergency declared on April 1, 2015, and the measures adopted on that date to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond April 1, 2016.”
Number of cyber attacks increasing
The extension of the national emergency comes at a time when the occurrence of cyber attacks is on the rise. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) [link url=”https://amuedge.com/u-s-government-sees-rise-in-cyber-attacks/” title=”recently released a report“] detailing how the U.S. government fought off more than 77,000 cyber incidents in 2015.
According to the OMB report, the number of cyber attacks on government Web properties in 2015 increased 10 percent year-over-year from 2014 and increased 27 percent from two years earlier in 2013.
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