washington alarmed at repeated cyberattacks on the country especially after at a key fuel pipeline last week us president joe biden has signed an executive order implementing new policies to improve national cybersecurityadmitting that the us is facing persistent and increasingly sophisticated malicious cyber campaigns that threaten the public sector the private sector and ultimately the american peoples security and privacy biden said on wednesday that the government must improve its efforts to identify deter protect against detect and respond to these actions and actorsprotecting our nation from malicious cyber actors requires the federal government to partner with the private sector the private sector must adapt to the continuously changing threat environment ensure its products are built and operate securely and partner with the federal government to foster a more secure cyberspace he wrote in the executive orderthe executive order outlines several initiatives including reducing barriers to information sharing between the government and the private sector mandating the deployment of multifactor authentication in the federal government establishing a cybersecurity safety review board and creating a standardised playbook for responding to cyber incidentsthe executive order was passed after the colonial pipeline company which is the largest refinedproducts pipeline in the country was forced to shut down due to a cybersecurity attack on may 7the company temporarily halted all pipeline operations after the cybersecurity attack involving ransomware was detected it has now partially restored the pipelinethe colonial pipeline transports more than 100 million gallons of fuel daily on the east coastbiden said that incremental improvements will not give the country the security it needsinstead the federal government needs to make bold changes and significant investments in order to defend the vital institutions that underpin the american way of life the scope of protection and security must include systems that process data information technology it and those that run the vital machinery that ensures our safety operational technology ot he emphasisedthe cyberattack on the fuel pipeline was a huge one after the solarwinds software attacksince february the biden administration has been working to remediate the solarwinds attack and change federal it practices to protect against similar attacks in the futurein another big cyberattack after solarwinds at least 30000 organisations across the us including government and commercial firms were hacked by chinabased threat actors who used microsofts exchange server software to enter their networksthe federal bureau of investigation fbi then launched a mega operation to copy and remove malicious web shells from hundreds of vulnerable computers in the us that were running onpremises versions of microsoft exchange server software used to provide enterpriselevel email service