Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Rick has more than 30 years of experience in covering federal policy, and has worked as an editor and reporter in such key policy areas as energy and environment, health care policy, and now cybersecurity and the tech industry. Rick is a founding member of the editorial team at Inside Cybersecurity, reporting on federal cybersecurity policies since their earliest stages, and is a regular contributor to Inside Defense.
The Defense Department is providing backup resources to the Department of Homeland Security's center for tracking and responding to cyber threats under a new formal arrangement that will be set up within the next week, according to the director of the DHS' National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.
The Pentagon is working with the Department of Homeland Security in gathering cyber-threat indicators from the financial services industry as part of a model program that is expected to be applied to other sectors, according to Defense Department Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy.
A congressionally mandated commission on U.S.-China relations is developing a report for release this fall that will likely outline measures for countering China's cyber activities, following a recent Defense Department annual review that highlighted Beijing's growing threat in cyberspace.
The Senate-approved fiscal year 2019 defense spending bill identifies cybersecurity investments as crucial to maintaining a U.S. military advantage over foreign adversaries, while encouraging an acceleration of the Pentagon's ongoing efforts to boost the nation's cyber defenses.
The White House is putting its sights on China -- a known international cyber aggressor -- as it develops regulations under new authority granted by recently enacted defense authorization legislation that strengthens the administration's ability to block foreign investments based on national security concerns.
President Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, is touting the deterrence benefit of offensive operations in cyberspace, as the administration has reportedly unleashed the U.S. military to pursue cyber aggressors and as high-ranking officials have pledged a more active role in countering foreign cyber adversaries, including sources indicating Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is poised to issue a cybersecurity statement.
China's development of a Strategic Support Force for cyber and electronic warfare is modeled on the consolidation of operations under U.S. Cyber Command, according to a new Pentagon report, which describes China's push for global dominance in cyberspace.
The recently enacted annual defense authorization measure gives the Defense Department broad authority to take a more active role in defending privately owned critical infrastructure, deterring and "defeating" cyber aggression from foreign adversaries -- specifically Russia, China, North Korea and Iran -- and securing industrial operations relied on by the military.
The Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act signed into law this week calls on the Pentagon to provide assistance to the Department of Homeland Security in protecting critical infrastructure from cyberattacks -- in line with a long-standing arrangement between DHS and private industryy on sharing threat intelligence -- as part of a pilot project slated to run through 2022.
The Pentagon has revised its five-year-old cyber operations plan by citing legal limits and the fast-changing nature of data technologies as imposing constraints on U.S. superiority in cyberspace.
The Defense Department's top cybersecurity official said the WannaCry ransomware attack earlier this year highlighted the military's dependence on third-party suppliers which creates cyber risks that are being dealt with through acquisition rules going into effect later this year.
Legislation offered by a bipartisan group of House lawmakers would require the government to develop an interagency response to a cyberattack that threatens the sensitive data of federal employees, in a move that could set new data-breach reporting requirements and would establish as a matter of national security an attack on federal data systems.
Foreign adversaries are using cyberspace to threaten physical harm to the nation's critical infrastructure -- from power plants to hospitals to transportation systems -- with increasingly sophisticated attacks that take advantage of emerging technologies and vulnerabilities from the Internet of Things, according to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) will hold a hearing Thursday to examine foreign cyber threats, marking the first congressional action on investigating hacking since the Obama administration announced its findings about Russia's attempts at influencing the presidential election.
The Trump transition team officially announced Monday the nomination of retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly to be the next homeland security secretary, a pick that emphasizes the incoming administration's focus on the department's border security and immigration mission, over other wide-ranging responsibilities such as data protection.
President-elect Donald Trump's selection of retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis to be defense secretary offers few particulars on the four-star general's record regarding cybersecurity, but Mattis' views on an evolving military role to address emerging threats appears consistent with Trump's call for a more active approach to defending critical industries from cyber attacks.
President-elect Donald Trump appears likely to assign a more active role for the Pentagon in protecting critical industries, such as power plants and chemical facilities, in an apparent response to longstanding industry concerns about defending against cyber attacks by nation-state aggressors.
The Defense Department's rules for contractors and subcontractors to report cyber incidents go into effect on Thursday, with the Pentagon still not having clarified the procedures for reporting such incidents, according to the law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.
The Defense Department will address contractor liability concerns for reporting a data breach to the government in a future rulemaking, while moving forward with the bulk of a new regulation on cyber incidents issued today that affects both subcontractors and general contractors.
The Defense Department last week sent to the White House its interim rule on contractor cyber-incident reporting, another step toward codifying requirements that went into effect last year.