All of Washington is back from Christmas break, and suddenly the Biden Administration is showing a sharp departure from the Obama and Clinton years where regulation of Big Tech is concerned. Regulatory swagger is everywhere.
Treasury regulatory objections to Facebook's cryptocurrency project have forced the Silicon Valley giant to abandon the effort, Maury Shenk tells us, and the White House is initiating what looks like a major interagency effort to regulate cryptocurrency on national security grounds. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is getting serious (sort of) about monitoring the internal security of electric grid systems, Tatyana Bolton reveals. The White House and Environmental Protection Agency are launching a "sprint" to bring some basic cybersecurity to the nation's water systems. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is full of ideas for expanding the Security and Exchange Commission's security requirements for brokers, public companies, and those who service the financial industry. And the Federal Trade Commission is entertaining a rulemaking petition that could profoundly affect companies now enjoying the gusher of online ad money generated by aggregating consumer data. And that's just this week.
In other news, Dave Aitel gives us a thoughtful assessment of why the log4j vulnerability isn't creating as much bad news as we first expected. It's a mildly encouraging story of increased competence and speed in remediation, combined with the complexity (and stealth) of serious attacks built on the flaw.
