White House Issues Executive Order Combating Cybercrime, Fraud, and Predatory Schemes Against American Citizens

The President issued Executive Order 14390 to address cybercrime, fraud, and predatory schemes against American citizens. These activities include ransomware and malware deployment, phishing, financial fraud, sextortion and other extortion schemes, and impersonation. The order states that they are often coordinated campaigns by transnational criminal organizations, sometimes with state support from foreign regimes. The policy of the United States is to protect Americans and harden financial and digital systems against these threats. The United States will counter such attacks with responses that include law enforcement, diplomacy, and potential offensive actions. Support for victims, expanded public alerts, and protection for those most at risk are also priorities. The order directs the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of War, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security to review relevant frameworks within 60 days. They must submit an action plan within 120 days that identifies the responsible organizations and proposes solutions to prevent, disrupt, investigate, and dismantle them. The plan includes establishing an operational cell in the National Coordination Center to coordinate detection, disruption, and deterrence efforts. The action plan will describe use of technical capabilities and threat intelligence from commercial cybersecurity firms to enhance attribution and tracking. The Attorney General shall prioritize prosecutions of defendants in cyber-enabled fraud cases. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall partner to provide training and technical assistance to state, local, tribal, and territorial partners to harden their systems. Within 90 days, the Attorney General shall submit a recommendation for a Victims Restoration Program to provide restoration to victims from recovered funds. The Secretary of State shall engage foreign governments to demand enforcement actions against transnational criminal organizations and coordinate consequences with allies and partners.