What happened

After a brief pause for the holiday weekend, shares of cybersecurity stocks are moving higher Tuesday morning, with Fortinet (FTNT 1.00%) tacking on 2% through 11 a.m. ET, CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD -0.68%) rising 2.6%, and Zscaler (ZS 0.30%) leading the sector higher with a 2.9% gain.

So what

As Slate Magazine reports this morning, the Biden Administration "is getting much more aggressive" in the field of cybersecurity -- potentially yielding financial benefits for cybersecurity companies including CrowdStrike, Zscaler, and Fortinet.  

Describing the new, not-yet-public 35-page National Cybersecurity Strategy (NCS) document that President Biden will soon sign, Slate says that on the one hand, the policy "authorizes U.S. defense, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies to go on the offensive, hacking into the computer networks of criminals and foreign governments."

At the same time, the NCS says that within the private sector, merely encouraging companies to take voluntary measures to improve their cybersecurity has not worked. To the contrary, many companies still consider it too expensive to make such improvements.

The results, including the 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and the 2020 SolarWinds fiasco, continue to make headlines.

So the NCS will switch tactics. "Mandatory regulations are needed to prod [American companies] into action," it says, and so mandatory regulations they shall have. Furthermore, the government will enlist cybersecurity companies (including publicly traded businesses) as "full partners in this effort."

Now what

It's not 100% certain how to quantify the effect of the new NCS in dollars and cents. It's not even 100% certain when investors can expect to see any benefit from the new rules.

Slate cautions that even after the NCS is signed, an "implementations strategy" will need to be worked out. It's entirely possible (even likely, I'd say) that we'll see new cybersecurity regulations roll out only at the speed of government, so to speak.

Presumably, this is why even a much more aggressive government approach to cybersecurity, and a partnership with private companies, are only having a low-single-digit effect on cybersecurity stock prices today.

That being said, the trend is encouraging, and the longer it takes the government to act upon its new intentions, the longer you can expect this trend to continue.

Things are looking modestly better for cybersecurity stocks today. And with all three of the above-mentioned companies generating positive free cash flow already (and Fortinet profitable on a GAAP basis), I'd say now is a good time for investors to get a little more aggressive themselves about buying cybersecurity stocks.