Trump Cyber EO May Come Within 'Week or So,' CENC Vice Chairman Says

President Donald Trump's anticipated cybersecurity executive order is "moving along and maybe within a week or so we could see something," said former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event Monday. Palmisano, vice chairman of the federal Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, said he would attend a White House meeting later Monday to provide feedback on the revised order. Palmisano said he has not received any official confirmation on the EO's timeline. The White House didn’t comment. The White House has continued to revise the anticipated order in the weeks since officials first delayed Trump's planned late January signing of it. Then, the order would have directed the Office of Management and Budget to assess all federal agencies' cybersecurity risks and required agencies to manage their risk using the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Cybersecurity Framework (see 1701310066). Recent drafts of the EO have included language that would direct the Department of Commerce to explore ways to encourage “core communications infrastructure” companies “to improve the resilience of such infrastructure and to encourage collaboration with the goal of dramatically reducing threats perpetrated by” botnets (see 1702280065). Likely requirements for agencies’ cybersecurity accountability will be “a very important piece of this” executive order, said former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, who chairs CENC, during the CSIS event. “That is a contract, if you will, between the president and the people he hires to run the agencies and departments.”