Cybersecurity Policy in the Trump Era
As the Trump administration gets underway, the cybersecurity agenda of the next four years has begun to take shape. One of the most consequential cybersecurity actions of the Biden years was the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s cybersecurity rules. The rules have drawn criticism, as have Biden-era guidelines from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Now, the Trump administration is considering paths forward. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce offered insightful comments. “I’ve not been in favor of having super particularized obligations because I think that can, again, lead to this checklist approach where people are looking at, ‘What is the SEC telling us we have to do with respect to cyber and we’ll do that,’” she said.
Peirce added this can lead regulated businesses to prioritize compliance over adapting to the unique and new challenges they face. To maintain strong cybersecurity, businesses need to have the latitude to pursue solutions that will suit their specific needs. “I would prefer not to be in the business of us being the designer of every regulated entity’s cyber program,” Peirce said.
In today’s digital era, cybersecurity must be always at the forefront of policymakers’ minds. Properly crafting cybersecurity policy will be one of the most important tasks of the next decades.
Published on April 3, 2025