In the wake of several high profile cyber attacks against American telecommunications companies, health systems, and even the U.S. Treasury, the Biden Administration will soon announce new rules for holding hackers accountable, a senior administration official said.

According to the Biden Administration official, a soon-to-be released, 11th-hour executive order will aim to make sanctions more effective against malicious actors and foster the development of more secure software in the private sector in order to help prevent some of the $56 billion lost annually by U.S. victims of identity fraud.

The executive order “is designed to strengthen America’s digital foundations, and also put the new administration and the country on a path to continued success. The goal is to make it costlier and harder for China, Russia, Iran, and ransomware criminals, and to also signal that America means business when it comes to protecting our business and our citizens,” the senior administration official said during a press call Wednesday.

The upcoming order builds on cybersecurity efforts the Biden Administration made in 2021, but adds teeth to provisions that lacked an enforcement mechanism under the old order, the official said.

The executive order will “increase transparency and security in the software supply chain,” while driving “companies to build more secure software” and requiring government vendors to provide “proof” to federal authorities that their development practices are indeed secure.

The government will be ordered to verify those proofs and publish the verification, so technology consumers know which developers are using secure technologies. Biden’s previous order encouraged secure software development but didn’t require proof when companies claimed compliance.

Federal agencies will implement “centralized visibility and threat hunting” measures to share information across departments, according to administration official, and federal systems users will be required to use end-to-end encryption when sharing information electronically.

The order also mandates that, in the coming years, the federal government will begin only buying connected devices that carry a “Cyber Trust Mark.”

“The Cyber Trust Mark program gives Americans an easy way to see whether consumer products – like baby monitors and home security systems – are cybersecure. To incentivize companies to build more secure, connected devices and keep Americans safe from malicious hackers, the U.S. Government will buy only Cyber Trust Mark labeled devices beginning in 2027,” the administration explained in a fact sheet.

According to the Biden Administration, “the United States stands alone among major economies in lacking secure, privacy-preserving digital identity infrastructure, leaving Americans exposed to a wave of cybercrime.”

President Joe Biden (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)