White House looks to put cybersecurity pressure on companies

The White House on Thursday released its national cybersecurity strategy, detailing an effort to increase regulation of critical industries by making them adopt basic cybersecurity practices

The White House is calling for new regulations to force companies critical to economic and national security, to raise their cyber defenses.

It's part of President Biden's new cybersecurity strategy. It's a policy document, and not law, but the White House wants to work with Congress to develop legislation that holds software makers liable when their products don't adequately protect against hackers.

The White House strategy would aim to persuade large software companies to bear more responsibility for building better security into their products. Cybersecurity experts have long lamented that software is often written hastily and with security as an afterthought, creating a culture in which engineers are constantly fixing problems as hackers find new ones.