Category Archives: Chris Painter

Tillerson to officially eliminate cyber coordinator office

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The State Department’s cyber coordinator office will be shuttered, Secretary Rex Tillerson announced Monday. The move comes one month after Chris Painter, America’s top cyber diplomat for six years, announced his departure in July. Some of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues (CCI) office’s responsibilities will fall to the Bureau of Economics and Business Affairs (EB), according to a letter Tillerson sent to Congress that outlined a broad reorganization, downgrading and even elimination of some special envoys in the State Department. The Economic and Business Affairs bureau will receive a $5.5 million budget boost as a result of the realignment. Two weeks after leaving his post, Painter published a blog defending the CCI office’s work. “Achieving the future we want will require continued high-level attention and a significant and sustained effort,” Painter argued. “Diplomacy has and must continue to play a pivotal role  —  shaping the environment, building cooperation, and working to build coalitions to respond to shared […]

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State Department’s top cyber diplomat announces departure

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Chris Painter, the State Department’s lead cyber diplomat for the past six years, is leaving at the end of this month. Painter, who was first appointed as the department’s coordinator for cyber issues by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011,  led the United States’ cybersecurity diplomatic efforts, including representing the U.S. in bilateral meetings around the globe. Last month, he traveled to Israel to announce a cyber domain partnership between Israel and the United States. He’s worked to promote international cyber norms and represented the State Department on sensitive operations and responses to international threats. Prior to his work in the State Department, he worked in the White House for two years as the senior director for cybersecurity at the National Security Council. That was preceded by 19 years at the Department of Justice under Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. Painter served during an epochal […]

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Experts warn Congress of the return of Chinese IP theft

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Hackers working for the Chinese government again appear to be conducting economic espionage against private U.S. companies and other American organizations, experts told lawmakers Tuesday during an open Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing. Cybersecurity experts have stated that Chinese cyber espionage operations — hacking activities aimed at stealing trade secrets, intellectual property or other confidential business information — has substantially declined in the wake of an agreement struck between former President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in September 2015. But at least “anecdotally,” there has been a re-emergence of related economic espionage by Chinese hackers aimed at U.S. entities, according to Samantha Ravich, a current senior adviser to D.C.-based think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Over the last year, the FDD has established a team to study what it defines as “economic warfare.” “It seems there was a dip at first but the anecdotes that are […]

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