Trump signs executive order on cybersecurity

United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that would improve government's cybersecurity that seeks to reduce threats from automated attacks on the Internet.

As per the order, the agency heads will be held accountable for protecting their networks and will require them to use their government's commerce department guidelines to manage risks to their systems.

The order places the defence secretary and the head of the intelligence community in charge of protecting "national security" systems that operate classified and military network.

The order also asks the federal agencies to use The Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (the Framework) developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to manage the agency's cybersecurity risk.

"Each agency head shall provide a risk management report to the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) within 90 days of the date of this order," the order read.

"We've seen increasing attacks from allies, adversaries, primarily nation states but also non-nation state actors, and sitting by and doing nothing is no longer an option. So President Trump's action today is a very heartening one," Thomas Bossert, Trump's homeland security adviser, said during a Whitehouse press briefing.

Bossert, however, said the order was not prompted by a Russian-motivated issue, that targetted presidential elections last year, rather it was a United States of America-motivated issue.

"The Russians are not our only adversary on the Internet, and the Russians are not the only people that operate in a negative way on the Internet. The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, other nation states are motivated to use cyber capacity and cyber tools to attack our people and our governments and their data," he added.