The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is charting progress against an extensive to-do list that the intelligence community leader said is advancing the Cyber Strategy for America issued by President Donald Trump earlier this month.
“Protecting our nation’s most sensitive information from those who seek to exploit it, while making sure our intelligence professionals have the tools and access they need to do their jobs, is not optional,” said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on March 26, adding, “It is essential to our national security.”
“Over the past year, we have taken meaningful steps to begin fulfilling that responsibility through the largest IC-wide technology investment and modernization effort in history,” Gabbard said.
The intelligence community, which ODNI oversees, “is moving faster and more decisively on cybersecurity modernization and investments in IT than ever before, delivering stronger defenses, greater efficiency, and real cost savings for the American people,” she said.
Key steps in the modernization effort, ODNI said, include ongoing work to develop “the policy framework, governance, and standards necessary to accelerate AI adoption for cybersecurity and other critical technology, enhancing interoperability across the IC.”
The agency also said it has “targeted vulnerabilities and modernized networks and data centers, ultimately increasing resilience against potential adversary attacks and strengthening technology performance.”
ODNI said it has also been working with the Defense Department (DOD) “on joint use of classified commercial cloud data centers, cutting costs in half, and ultimately saving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.” The Trump administration has rebranded DOD to the Department of War.
Other modernization steps include implementing a new zero trust strategy, creating an IC-wide repository of cybersecurity authorizations, promoting “reciprocity” across IC and DOD systems, and expanding automated threat hunting on IC systems, ODNI said.