Newmark initiative will bring online a network of civil defense hackers

A new initiative links together volunteer cyber programs with those most needing help.

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Tech companies offered free products to help secure the election. Now what?

The unprecedented foreign hacking and misinformation campaigns that were reported around the 2016 U.S. election cast a cloak of doubt over the integrity of the country’s democratic process. The threat sent government officials on the federal, state and local level scrambling to ensure that the country’s voting machines, voter registration systems, pollbooks, results-reporting websites and other election technology is ready for the midterm elections. Over the past few months, about a dozen technology companies have announced programs offering state and local election offices or political organizations free services to help them fend off looming threats, including email protection, extra security for cloud applications, basic antivirus coverage, multi-factor authentication tools and several other types of products. As elections in the U.S. are run by the states, securing a federal election requires a massive coordinated effort. The federal government has been playing a greater role to this end since 2016, but can only do so much without […]

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NSA deputy says U.S. cyberattack responses must improve

The way that U.S. government agencies respond to cyberattacks against the private sector from nation-state or other high-level adversaries is “fundamentally flawed” and needs to change, outgoing NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett said Tuesday. Ledgett, the latest addition to a growing list of cybersecurity officials and former officials who have called for the nation’s cyber responses to be overhauled, mocked existing response plans at an Aspen Institute luncheon roundtable hosted by former Justice Department senior official John Carlin. “The analogy a colleague of mine uses,” Ledgett explained, “is … if your house catches on fire, you have to call the mayor to see if he’ll let you call the water department to ask them to turn the water on. And then you call the city council to see if you can get funding for the fire department to send a truck. And by the time that’s all happened, your cyber house has burned to […]

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NSA deputy says U.S. cyberattack responses must improve

The way that U.S. government agencies respond to cyberattacks against the private sector from nation-state or other high-level adversaries is “fundamentally flawed” and needs to change, outgoing NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett said Tuesday. Ledgett, the latest addition to a growing list of cybersecurity officials and former officials who have called for the nation’s cyber responses to be overhauled, mocked existing response plans at an Aspen Institute luncheon roundtable hosted by former Justice Department senior official John Carlin. “The analogy a colleague of mine uses,” Ledgett explained, “is … if your house catches on fire, you have to call the mayor to see if he’ll let you call the water department to ask them to turn the water on. And then you call the city council to see if you can get funding for the fire department to send a truck. And by the time that’s all happened, your cyber house has burned to […]

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