Stung by the WikiLeaks document dump, President Barack Obama signed a decree Friday aimed at shoring up US data security and avoiding a repeat of the massive leak that deeply embarrassed Washington last year. The White House said Obama signed the executive order outlining several structural reforms at federal agencies, including creation of a senior steering committee that will oversee the safeguarding and sharing of information.
The regulation also calls for creation of an "Insider Threat Task Force" to detect vulnerabilities and prevent breaches of classified information from within the government and the military's ranks. The anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks had been slowly releasing the leaked documents from last November and worked to erase the names of potentially vulnerable sources. But last month it dumped its full unredacted archive of 251,000 US diplomatic cables online, sparking a firestorm of criticism.