President Biden signed an executive order Wednesday boosting America's cyber defenses following a ransomware attack on a company that operates a pipeline that provides nearly half of the gasoline and jet fuel for the country's East Coast.

The broad order, which the administration had been working on for months, aims to strengthen cybersecurity for federal networks and outline new security standards for commercial software used by both business and the public.

President Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order intended to improve US cybersecurity after the hack of the Colonial Pipeline caused massive disruption to the US fuel market.

The order establishes a new multiagency Cybersecurity Safety Review Board to review incidents and mandates that federal systems log cybersecurity incidents and use multifactor authentication and stronger encryption.

President Biden signed an executive order Wednesday aimed at shoring up the federal government’s digital defenses as his administration grapples with cybersecurity crises, including a ransomware strike on a major fuel pipeline that has caused gas shortages.

Less than four months into his tenure, Biden has had to respond to a Russian cyberespionage operation that affected nine federal agencies and about 100 American companies, as well as a Chinese cyberhacking campaign that compromised tens of thousands of small and midsize firms that used Microsoft Exchange email servers.