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Biden Administration Cyber Attacks Overview:
- Who: The Biden administration seeks to partner with private sector businesses.
- Why: Cyber security officials want to work with businesses against cyber attacks by sharing information about hacking and breaches more quickly.
- Where: The call for partnership affects companies and consumers nationwide.
At the Global Privacy Summit in Washington, D.C., government officials urged private companies to view them as a partner against cyber attacks so as to better respond to and protect against hacking.
Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Herb Stapleton, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis field office, both urged organizations to report cyber breaches to CISA and the FBI and promised to not use such reports as incentive for legal action against the companies.
“At the end of the day, we are not here to name, to shame, to blame, to kill anybody’s reputation, to stab the wounded, right?” Easterly said. “We are actually here to help.”
Hacking Reports Won’t Be Shared With Private Sector Regulators, Agencies Say
Both Easterly and Stapleton stressed that their agencies will not share breach report data with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The data will be used to help the victims of the breach, as well as other potential victims from being hacked in the future.
Easterly did note, however, that if companies are found to lack even the bare minimum of cyber protections, regulatory action would likely be taken. The partnership is not a promise of “complete absolution.”
“I think that we need to be mindful that not everybody should get a free pass for having a significant cyber event occur if, in fact, it occurred because you weren’t doing the basics,” she said.
Leonard Bailey, special counsel for national security at the Department of Justice, also stated at the summit that victims’ names can be kept from press releases or court filings by prosecutors.
Stapleton also assured companies that the FBI will not use its access to companies’ servers to look for evidence of other crimes even if related to the hack. Instead, the FBI will focus on identifying the hackers behind the cyber attack to “determine whether a federal crime has been committed or whether there is a national security threat that’s ongoing.”
Govt. Agencies Warn of Infrastructure Cyber Flaws
CISA and other federal agencies also warned the private sector that hacking groups are targeting infrastructure systems, such as the country’s energy and manufacturing sectors, and that there are flaws there.
The calls for partnership follow the March passing of the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act. The act, which has not yet come into effect, will require critical infrastructure operators to report “substantial” incidents to CISA within 72 hours and alert the agency within 24 hours of making a ransomware payment.
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