San Francisco, Jan 20 (TIWN) Outgoing US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in a bid to curb the use of the country's cloud computing products and services products by foreign malicious cyber actors.

Foreign malicious cyber actors aim to harm the US economy through the theft of intellectual property and sensitive data and to threaten national security by targeting the country's critical infrastructure for malicious cyber-enabled activities, the White House said on Tuesday.  The order signed on Trump's final full day in office noted that foreign actors use US Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) products for a variety of tasks in carrying out malicious cyber-enabled activities.  These activities make it difficult for officials to track and obtain information through legal process before these "foreign actors transition to replacement infrastructure and destroy evidence of their prior activities," it added.  IaaS products provide persons the ability to run software and store data on servers offered for rent or lease without responsibility for the maintenance and operating costs of those servers.  This order provides authority to impose record-keeping obligations with respect to foreign transactions.