cyber
Paul Kolbe, Director, Intelligence Project, Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Paul Kolbe is Director of The Intelligence Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He previously served 25 years as an operations officer in the CIA and was a member of the ...
Cipher Brief Expert and former Secretary for Homeland Security Michael Chertoff is Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of the Chertoff Group. He served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from 2005-2009. The Cipher Brief wanted to get the former Secretary’s thoughts on where we are with cyber today ...
Rep. John Katko (R-NY) is Ranking Member of the House Committee on Homeland Security. He is also a former federal prosecutor. OPINION -- It should not come as a surprise to anyone reading this article that we find ourselves in the wake of two significant cyber incidents. While we are ...
Cipher Brief Expert Alex Cresswell led an operational division of GCHQ and served in the Cabinet Office, directing the team of analysts (the Joint Intelligence Organisation) which provides the British Prime Minister’s daily briefing and strategic assessments for the NSC. EXPERT PERSPECTIVE – On 17 February 2021, the DOJ and the FBI finally ...
Rob Knake is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a non-resident fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is also an advisor to SecurityScorecard. Knake served from 2011 to 2015 as Director for Cybersecurity Policy at the National Security Council. EXPERT PERSPECTIVE ...
Join us this week Tuesday - Thursday for The Cipher Brief's Cybersecurity Summit featuring leaders from the public and private sectors, including Microsoft President Brad Smith, FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia, and 28 other cyber security thought leaders, including today's author, Andrew Stewart. Attendance is free and registration is required. Executing Commander’s Intent at Machine Speed for Cyber ...
Hitesh Sheth is the president and CEO of Vectra. Previously, he was chief operating officer at Aruba Networks and before that, he was EVP/GM at Juniper Networks. PRIVATE SECTOR -- The March 3 notice from the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity command was crisp and urgent. The headline: “Mitigate Microsoft ...
Cipher Brief Expert Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former Chief of Station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. Hoff man is an advisor to Vaillance Group. Shawnee Delaney was a clandestine officer and former Detachment Chief ...
Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics from nuclear weapons to politics. In 2002, he and a team of Post reporters won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. OPINION -- The worldwide cyber war ...
Lavy Shtokhamer is the former head of Israel's National CERT and Executive Director at the Israel National Cyber Directorate. He previously founded the Financial Cyber & Continuity Center at the Israeli CERT. Our friends at The Record talked with Shtokhamer about lessons learned at CERT. The conversation has been lightly ...
As Washington continues to investigate the true depth of what experts are describing as one of the most damaging cyberattacks in U.S. history, both government and private sector leaders are considering not only the aftermath, but the shifting dynamics of global espionage. The Cipher Brief is bringing you multiple expert ...
As Washington continues to investigate the true depth of what experts are describing as one of the most damaging cyberattacks in U.S. history, both government and private sector leaders are considering not only the aftermath, but the shifting dynamics of global espionage. The hack was first publicly reported by FireEye ...
Patrick D. Gaul is the Executive Director of the National Technology Security Coalition (NTSC), a non-profit, non-partisan, industry-agnostic organization focused on uniting both public and private sector stakeholders around policies that improve national cybersecurity standards and awareness. OPINION -- This year, the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee Act (H.R. 1975) was included ...
Philip Reitinger is the President and CEO of the Global Cyber Alliance. You can follow him on Twitter @CarpeDiemCyber OPINION -- “Black Tuesday” for cybersecurity came on November 17, when the President of the United States fired Chris Krebs, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Mr. Krebs had the temerity to do ...
The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) recently issued an advisory, reminding businesses that if they pay ransom to cyber hackers, they could be violating OFAC regulations. At first glance, it puts businesses that are already in an incredibly difficult situation, in an even harder one. ...
Earlier this month, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued an advisory, reminding businesses that if they pay ransom to cyber hackers, they could be violating OFAC regulations. At first glance, the advisory puts businesses that are already in an incredibly difficult situation, in an ...
We’ve all learned a lot this year. The onset of the global pandemic sent many of us scrambling to find new ways to do things that would allow for social distancing. For businesses, that meant employees working from home. But the cyber world wasn’t necessarily ready for the shift, as ...
The Cipher Brief spoke with former Special Assistant to President Obama and Cyber Security Coordinator on the National Security Council, Michael Daniel about the need for a new National Cyber Director. Daniel makes the case that the role he once held wouldn’t be enough to address today’s needs and that ...
An attempted cyberattack on Israel’s water system in late April, just months after the global pandemic hit, prompted fears that cyber adversaries are getting even more bold in their efforts to cause harm. Israel’s national cyber chief, Yigal Unna, officially acknowledged the plot, calling it a ‘synchronized and organized attack’ ...
Robert Griffin is the Managing Partner for DVI Equity Partners a Private Equity Investment arm of Diamond Ventures where he focuses on technology investments concentrated on delivering disruptive or disintermediating technology in areas of national security, law enforcement, critical infrastructure, and emerging trends. Bob has been a key player and ...
OPINION -- The US is taking a more active role in the ongoing cyber war between Russia and Ukraine on the side of the Kiev government. On May 14, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) announced the award of a four-year, $38 million contract to provide cyber security for critical ...
We know that corporate boards can no longer afford to leave cyber to the IT team. In the future, (which is now) they need to be actively engaged in cybersecurity and they need to know how to do it from a strategic level. Particularly in a time when many companies ...
This column is part of our new series, ‘From the C-Suite’, focused on bringing you perspectives on threats as they see them from leaders in the private sector. Eric Hipkins is the founder and CEO of R9B, a provider of cybersecurity training, products and services for the U.S. Department of ...
This column is part of our new series, ‘From the C-Suite’, focused on how leaders from the private sector are driving change and innovation in the national security and business security space. We’ll bring you insights on the threats as they see them and notes on their personal journeys, motivations, ...
This column is part of our new series, ‘From the C-Suite’, focused on how leaders from the private sector - in their own words - are driving change and innovation in the national security space. We’ll bring you insights on the threats as they see them and notes on their ...
BOOK REVIEW: The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics by Ben Buchanan Reviewed by Peter M. Tran Peter M. Tran is a former NCIS Special Agent and information security, cyber defense technology, and security operations expert. He has over 20 years of experience developing and ...
Sean Roche is former Associate Deputy Director of CIA for Digital Innovation. The Directorate of Digital Innovation (DDI) was created to accelerate the integration of advanced digital capability across all of CIA’s mission areas and is responsible for a wide range of espionage missions including cyber intelligence, open source collection, secure global communications, ...
Sean Roche is former Associate Deputy Director of CIA for Digital Innovation. The Directorate of Digital Innovation (DDI) was created to accelerate the integration of advanced digital capability across all of CIA’s mission areas and is responsible for a wide range of espionage missions including cyber intelligence, open source collection, secure global communications, ...
‘Quantum computing’ is a phrase used more frequently in national security conversations these days. What does it mean? In its simplest definition, quantum computing involves the behavior of sub-atomic particles in computing, which translates into a fundamentally different way computers can solve problems. Quantum computing is part of an emerging ...
Thomas Donahue is a Cipher Brief expert and former Senior Director for Cyber Operations on the U.S. National Security Council Staff. His article was originally published by National Defense University Press PRISM. As a global power, the United States must be able to sustain military forces and project power anywhere ...
OPINION -- The Trump administration’s new attempt to open strategic nuclear talks with China “ASAP,” as mentioned in a State Department tweet last Friday, focuses on the wrong subject. Any talks about strategic deterrence among nations should be dealing first with the future of cyber warfare and weaponry rather than ...
It is no secret that Hermione revealed that the basilisk traveled via the pipes in the second installment of the Harry Potter series. When I began my consulting career with the National Communications System (NCS) and cybersecurity became the sexy cousin, the communications muggles liked to remind the cyber wizards ...
Tom Bossert spends a lot of time thinking about hacking. The former Homeland Security Advisor to President Trump who also served as the country’s Chief Risk Officer and Senior Advisor on cyber, left his White House position in 2018. It happened just after Bossert spoke at The Cipher Brief’s Annual ...
Bottom Line Up Front In 2019, it is easier than ever for nation-states or wealthy individuals to pay virtual mercenaries to conduct a range of illicit activities including espionage, data theft, and cyber intimidation and harassment. Companies require permits from their respective governments to export surveillance software, but government ...
Ben Buchanan recently testified at a House Homeland Security Subcommittee Meeting on Preparing for the Future: An Assessment of Emerging Cyber Threats. He is a Senior Faculty Fellow, Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Mortara Center, Assistant Teaching Professor, Georgetown University. Cybersecurity, already rife with challenges, is becoming even more complex with the rise ...
SPONSORED CONTENT -- As I’ve talked to many Department of Defense leaders over the years, I’ve often heard them ask, “how much would a pound of cybersecurity for a weapon system cost me?” Truthfully, up until this point, we had a difficult time responding. That is, until now – more ...
“My personal view is, the first shots of the future fight will be either in the cyber domain or -- maybe it's an ‘and’ -- and the space domain. And so we've got to make sure we have sufficient capability there because that's critical to our capabilities to fight and ...
This Cyber Viewpoint comes from James Van de Velde, Associate Professor at the National Intelligence University as well as Adjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown University. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy position of the U.S. ...
The Cyber Initiatives Group is a group of public - private and academic thought leaders who share their unique expertise with the greater cyber community through a series of CIG webcasts and in-person events throughout the year. This is a preview webcast exclusively for The Cipher Brief, where readers were briefed ...
NSA Director General Paul Nakasone announced last week that he is creating a new cybersecurity directorate that will focus on – among other things – aligning the agency’s resources on both offense and defensive cyber operations. “What I’m trying to get to in a space like cybersecurity is speed, agility ...
Cybersecurity firm Finite State issued a recent report concluding that telecommunications equipment made by Chinese firm Huawei present a higher percentage of security vulnerabilities than equipment produced by other firms. A story in The Wall Street Journal citied numerous sources inside the Administration who pointed to the report as further ...
Few today would argue that the threat surface in cyberspace has expanded significantly in the past decade. Just ask your fridge. From the new risks we’ve brought into our own kitchens, to the increased capabilities of nation states to disrupt everything from electricity to elections, there is an even greater ...
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif confirmed Monday that Tehran has violated the limits imposed on uranium enrichment that were a key part of the 2015 nuclear deal. The U.S. withdrew its support for the deal last year. The Trump Administration on Monday responded to the confirmation of increased uranium enrichment, ...
Earlier this week, The Cipher Brief brought you expert insights into How Iran Targets U.S. Businesses, after a warning last weekend by DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Director Christopher Krebs. “Iranian regime actors and proxies are increasingly using destructive ‘wiper’ attacks, looking to so much more than just steal ...
There are a few more details coming out about last week’s cyber targeting of an Iranian-backed group by the U.S. military. Sources told CNN that the goal was to “disable and degrade” an Iranian-backed group that operates forces in Iraq and Syria by disabling their communications systems. The latest details ...
U.S. businesses are being warned to harden their defenses in anticipation of potential cyberattacks as tensions between the U.S. and Iran continue to escalate. President Donald Trump posted to Twitter on Tuesday that “Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some ...
Investigative journalist Joseph Menn, author of the recently released Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World has a history of writing books to explain the often-complicated intersection of history, technology and moral decision-making. His latest book traces the origins of a once ...
Defending New Yorkers against criminals and terrorists has been a priority for city leaders and law enforcement for quite some time, but in the last couple of years, officials have taken more aggressive steps to protect the city from the threat actors that often go unseen but can wreak havoc ...
Japan’s cybersecurity will be put to the test over the next 18 months. The world’s attention will be fixed on the island country as it hosts two major events: the Rugby World Cup in September and the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. The tournaments will likely be an attractive target for ...
BOOK REVIEW: Cult of the Dead Cow – How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World By Joseph Menn Reviewed by Christopher Messina Joseph Menn has good timing. The topic of cybersecurity has attained a degree of cultural currency that is still waxing. His book is part historical ...