Presidential Crisis Management Essay: Responding to Cyberattacks

Governments have always been the target of cybercriminals because of the valuable information that criminals target for use in further criminal activities, to weaken the government’s position in international conflicts, or to sell in the black market. The US government has experienced several cyberattacks, some that successfully compromised national security and others that were stopped just in time. The president has the duty to protect the nation from such attacks by implementing security policies and giving executive orders on suitable actions (Raphelson, 2017). Previous presidents such as George W Bush and Joe Biden issued directives to mitigate these attacks on the US.

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The government has, once again, been attacked by the Russians. The attack is suspected to have been implemented by a hacker group with the support of the Russian government targeting the security and administrative departments such as the Treasury, Justice, Commerce, local and federal government systems, and NATO. The hackers accessed the systems by inserting malware into Orion, exploiting the compromised versions of the software. The implications were that the hackers accessed thousands of systems with government and security-sensitive data, such as information on ongoing cases involving large corporations and government officials, and financial data was stolen. This resembles an attack that occurred in 2020, which the President, Trump, had initially called a bluff and delayed taking action against. Trump’s leadership in a crisis was considered chaotic, which is dangerous because the nation needs guidance with clear steps toward resolving the problems (Haley, 2018).

In response to this attack, the first action would be to order securing physical access to the systems in the specific departments. This is the first action in case insider persons coordinated the attack. Considering the rate of past attacks on the US from Russia, it is likely that data from former breaches were used to blackmail US officials into becoming spies. The goal is to prevent further access that could worsen the condition. The forensics team should then be sent to the affected areas, and the proper organizational cyber crisis response plans should be initiated. This should start a more comprehensive investigation into the attack and communications with the Russian government to establish their position on the accusations.

The second action is to prevent additional data loss by contacting the service providers. Orion, Microsoft, and other technology providers should offer their insight on how to navigate the attack. Some action already in information security policies is to force password resets. This will prevent the attackers from further accessing the systems. Other strategies include blocking and rerouting traffic, isolating the compromised networks, and disabling remote access. It is important to prevent further loss of critical information that increases the security threat.

The third action is to document all processes and collect evidence of the breach. The aim is to retain evidence for investigations and develop prevention plans. This process will involve IT personnel in every affected department in coordination with the forensics team. Enforcing these actions does not present constraints by the constitution. However, there may be a limit on how much the software providers can be engaged in the case.

Conclusion

Although the goal is to prevent cyberattacks, there can never be a perfect security system. Therefore, it is important to continually review the systems and policies to ensure the best security. Presidents retain the power to make executive orders, and previous leaders have established practical approaches to crisis management (Kapucu, 2009).

References

Haley, J. A. (2018, February 8). Crisis management in the Trump era. Centre for International Governance Innovation. https://www.cigionline.org/articles/crisis-management-trump-era/

Kapucu, N. (2009). Leadership under stress: Presidential roles in emergency and crisis management in the United States. International Journal of Public Administration, 32(9), 767-772. https://doi.org/10.1080/01900690903017025

Raphelson, S. (2017, August 18). Fathers of our country: How U.S. presidents exercised moral leadership in crisis. NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/18/544523278/fathers-of-our-country-how-u-s-presidents-exercised-moral-leadership-in-crisis