14 DAY TRIAL // US President-elect Donald Trump should train and hire around 100,000 hackers whose main purpose would be hacking but also defending the country from cyberattacks, a commission including top security experts, such as former NSA director Keith Alexander and MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga, said in a report.
The panel of security experts pointed out that cybersecurity should become a priority during Donald Trump’s tenure at the helm of the United States, and recommended the President-elect not only to train hackers and be prepared for any cyber threat but also to propose international norms for hacking that would guarantee better protection.
Cybersecurity, a priority for Trump
The Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity strongly pointed out that the United States should increase their efforts on training security experts that would work for the country and not leave for the private sector, which has become a dramatic problem in the last few years.
Salaries offered by private companies are substantially bigger than those offered by the United States, and Donald Trump is advised to tackle this issue in his first year as President of the US.
Furthermore, Trump must closely control all training programs because this could lead to lower skills and quality, and the President is also recommended to create a so-called “national cybersecurity workforce program” to prevent such issues.
Anonymous wants John McAfee to be a security adviser
Donald Trump has also been advised to hire a cyber adviser and a cyber ambassador and work together on a national cybersecurity strategy in the first months of his term, with the panel explaining that the President must involve security experts currently working for the largest companies in the United States, but also professors and researchers.
Hacking group Anonymous has recently announced a public campaign to support John McAfee in becoming a security adviser for Donald Trump, but neither the President-elect nor McAfee said they were interested in such a move.
At the same time, the panel is advising Donald Trump to offer incentives to companies in order to build more secure products in the United States, which is somehow in opposition with what the President-elect was aiming for during his campaign.
Trump called several times for Apple to hack its devices and help the FBI collect criminal information from an iPhone, so such a proposal can be adopted only if a backdoor is installed on these devices. Otherwise, making devices harder to hack would not align with Trump’s plans of giving authorities more power to unlock devices involved in criminal activities.
Donald Trump hasn’t yet commented on these proposals, but the President-elect is likely to take several steps to boost the cybersecurity of the United States.