US President Barack Obama’s government has sought $14 billion in the proposal for the 2016 fiscal year to further protect country’s public and private networks from cyber-attacks.
Cybersecurity funding in the US has been steadily increasing from the last few years, which reflects the intensity of threats country’s government agencies and corporate organizations are facing from both national and international cybercriminals.
$14 funding would be spent on various programs, such as monitoring and diagnostics of federal computer networks and deployment of more intrusion detection and prevention systems.
“Cyber threats targeting the private sector, critical infrastructure and the federal government demonstrate that no sector, network or system is immune to infiltration by those seeking to steal commercial or government secrets and property or perpetrate malicious and disruptive activity,” a summary issued by the White House said.
The budget proposal has also called for $160 million for the IT and cybersecurity of the weapons program at the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration and $227 million for the construction of a Civilian Cyber Campus, in Washington for the agencies responsible for cybersecurity.
The funding would be spent on monitoring and diagnostics of federal computer networks and deployment of more intrusion detection and prevention systems.
It is yet to be seen that the how much budget the Republican-led Congress will allocate for cybersecurity defenses during the fiscal year.
The White House proposal to increase cybersecurity budget came a month after Pentagon chief Joseph Dunford told Congress that nearly every U.S. weapons program showed “significant vulnerabilities” to cyber-attacks, including misconfigured, unpatched and outdated software.
Increased cybersecurity funding will be a major boost for weapon manufacturers like Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N) and Raytheon (RTN.N), General Dynamics Corp (GD.N) and Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N)
A number of smaller and medium range companies, including Computer Sciences Corp CSC.N, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH.N), CACI International (CACI.N) and Science Applications International Corp (SAIC.N) are also poised to benefit from the move.
Private sector companies like Hewlett Packard (HPQ.N), which offers cybersecurity services, will be also boosted by higher spending on cybersecurity.
The White House’s budget for most agencies referenced their cybersecurity efforts, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Personnel Management.
The US President has also called for the allocation of at least $28 million for the Agriculture Department’s Chief Information Officer to improve the agency’s cybersecurity and $15 million for the FBI’s grants, training, and technical assistance program that helps the law enforcement agency to fight economic, high-technology and Internet crimes.
