Angus Loten and James Rundle report:
The Trump administration wants state and local governments to play a bigger role in protecting water utilities, ports and other critical infrastructure from cyberattacks.
In an executive order signed Tuesday, President Trump directed White House senior security advisers to draw up a national resilience plan to protect critical infrastructure that shifts more responsibilities to the state and local level.
“Federal policy must rightly recognize that preparedness is most effectively owned and managed at the State, local, and even individual levels, supported by a competent, accessible, and efficient Federal Government,” he said.
So that includes funding states to help them take over more responsibility, right? Well, right? Maybe not. WSJ reports:
The order comes a week after the Department of Homeland Security cut about half of the federal funding, or $10 million, to the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which shares threat intelligence among state-level cyber agencies and staff.
A spokeswoman for the Center for Internet Security, a nonprofit that manages the center, said the cuts will leave state governments exposed to nation-state threats.
There may be those who will snarkily suggest that this may be exactly what Trump wants — to leave states more vulnerable to attacks by Russia. We would never be that snarky, though, would we?
Read more at The Wall Street Journal.