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The Biden administration is pushing hard to help fight the rise of ransomware attacks on private industry, and the White House is taking steps on multiple fronts to work with the private sector to combat the issue. […]

Joe Biden

The continued flurry of high-profile ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure targets in the United States is climbing the ladder of presidential priorities – with President Biden saying it’s on the agenda for his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this month, and White House officials confirming that cryptocurrency will be part of a new examination of global corruption. […]

The Biden administration is publicly demonstrating its willingness to lend Federal help to respond to a variety of ransomware assaults against critical infrastructure sectors – the latest involving a cyberattack against JBS USA, the world’s largest meatpacker, that forced the company reportedly to shut down nine of its plants. […]

White House

Action on the Biden administration’s $1.7 trillion infrastructure spending proposal that debuted in late March as the $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan is sliding well into June as the White House and Republican senators have traded offers and counteroffers on the legislation, but still remain deeply divided on the scope of the bill and its price tag. […]

Cybersecurity

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on March 31 previewed six “sprints” planned by DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) component throughout 2021 to bolster Federal cybersecurity across a range of areas including ransomware, industrial control system (ICS) security, and workforce development. […]

CISA
broadband

The Biden administration is proposing that the Federal government take a giant leap into the national broadband service market – traditionally the province of the private sector – in order to close persistent service availability and affordability gaps across the United States. […]

Biden
cybersecurity

It’s hard enough sometimes just keeping up with the challenges of cybersecurity in the big headline-news cases – think SolarWinds in recent months or the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) intrusion several years back. But the more you talk with experts in cybersecurity, the more it becomes clear that exploitable gaps in the network armor are nearly limitless, and that plugging those gaps requires innovative security in the spaces that remain off the radar for many. […]

NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a new guide, NISTIR 8170, to provide Federal agencies with different approaches to leveraging the Cybersecurity Framework to address common cyber problems. […]

Department of Homeland Security DHS

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released separate draft requests for proposal (RFPs) – one for its legacy voice system and one for its data network – under the General Services Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract program, an industry source told MeriTalk. […]

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Identification and Notification Act of 2020 (H.R. 5680) could slightly lower the deficit, but not by a significant amount. The bill, introduced by Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I. on Jan. 27, would authorize the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to issue administrative subpoenas in rare […]

Sens. Margaret Wood Hassan, D-N.H., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., signed a letter requesting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provide full funding to two key Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISAC). […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced the kick-off of its annual Infrastructure and Security and Resilience Month running through the end of November. […]

election security
supply chain risk management process automation

Federal Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Grant Schneider said today that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is continually working towards developing standards and accountability for supply chain security and cybersecurity. […]

Cybersecurity flag

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a list of 55 “national critical functions” today, signaling a shift from protecting specific critical infrastructure sectors to protecting specific activities that are crucial to the country. […]

President Trump on Tuesday issued an Executive Order that puts into place a range of policy actions to increase awareness of the danger that electromagnetic pulse (EMP) episodes pose to electric grids and  technology networks, and the critical infrastructure assets that depend on them – and to at least soften the potentially disastrous impact of naturally occurring or man-made EMPs.  […]

Christopher Krebs under secretary undersecretary DHS Department of Homeland Security National Protection and Programs Directorate NPPD leader CISA cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency

Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at the Department of Homeland Security, provided an update to Congress today about how CISA is working to secure election infrastructure ahead of the 2020 Presidential election. […]

Senators and witnesses alike took turns criticizing Chinese tech and trade policy, and China-based network equipment maker Huawei, at a hearing on Thursday over the firm’s alleged potential to create security harms if its equipment was included in U.S. 5G wireless networks. […]

IoT City Cyber modernization chip internet of things

Participants described how their participation in Jack Voltaic 2.0, a joint exercise between the City of Houston and the Army Cyber Institute held in July 2018, opened their eyes to the threats of a combined cyber and physical attack on critical infrastructure. […]

Members of the House and Senate are giving the bipartisan Securing Energy Infrastructure Act another go in the current Congress, after passing the bill in the Senate in December 2018 but failing to get the bill through the House before the 115th Congress ended. […]

elections, election security, voting

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, alongside the Justice Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Homeland Security, released a joint statement today that expresses their concern over election interference and calls identification and prevention of interference a “top priority for the Federal government.” […]

With critical infrastructure emerging as a major concern for the U.S. government, cybersecurity efforts must account for critical infrastructure’s interdependent and connected nature, and make sure to address the linkages between industries, said experts from the private and public sector at a Wednesday event hosted by the Atlantic Council. […]

Christopher Krebs under secretary undersecretary DHS Department of Homeland Security National Protection and Programs Directorate NPPD leader CISA cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency

Christopher Krebs, Department of Homeland Security under secretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), said Thursday that NPPD is focusing on the cybersecurity fight of both today and tomorrow, through the various coordinating centers that fall under NPPD’s purview. […]