Obama Orders Strategy for Protecting US Supply Chain

January 25, 2012

President Obama has directed the Department of State and Homeland Security to come up with a plan to protect the US supply chain.

The White House released a National Strategy for Global Supply Chain Security that gives State and DHS six months to make recommendations on identifying risks and making commercial infrastructure more resilient.

“We have seen that disruptions to supply chains caused by natural disasters -- earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions -- and from criminal and terrorist networks seeking to exploit the system or use it as a means of attack can adversely impact global economic growth and productivity,” Obama said in a letter released by the White House .

Obama directed department officials to confer with state, federal and international government agencies and private industry to identify areas that are most at risk and come up with layered defenses and tightened security steps to guard against disruptions, the letter says.

Ransomware and the propulsion of the extortion economy has rapidly eclipsed into a national priority. Recently, we observed the catastrophic impact of a widescale ransomware attack impacting gas pipelines and raising national gas prices overnight.