Both current and former officials say the government needs to take a different approach with Kaspersky's products.

The U.S. government may have a more extensive role to play in defending computer networks belonging specifically to American critical infrastructure companies, according to White House Homeland Security Adviser Thomas Bossert, although most are owned and operated by the private sector.

Special communications networks for the most critical industries would guard against a major cyberattack, an advisory panel said.

State election officials concerned about timeliness and funding as the government rolls out the DHS plan to implement election systems as “critical infrastructure."

Despite new evidence from a leaked NSA report that Russian hackers sought to compromise state and local election technology, the officials in charge are still vigorously opposing the federal designation of their polling systems as critical infrastructure.

The new version of the federal Cybersecurity Framework being drafted at the National Institute of Standards and Technology will be "backwards compatible."