NSA cyber-defense chief: ‘I have never been more busy’

The man responsible for leading the National Security Agency’s defensive mission says his team is fielding more calls than ever from agencies across the government. Dangerous, highly capable hackers and a desire by agencies to adopt cloud technology have increased the workload for Information Assurance chief Paul Pitelli and his office, which he says is “sort of like the Geek Squad for defense” in government. Pitelli is a career professional who has served in the NSA for more than 20 years as the secretive spy agency transformed into what it is today — a highly sophisticated technology behemoth with an array of federal responsibilities, including both signals intelligence and protecting sensitive government systems. With the recent retirement of former Information Assurance Directorate head Curtis Dukes, a renown computer scientist and intelligence community icon, Pitelli took on an increased role in an ever important effort to ensure that the Defense Department and broader government […]

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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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Microsoft’s Cyber Defense Ops Center Shares Best Practices

Microsoft gets a birds eye view of the various types of cyber threats that happen around the world because of their vast cloud service portfolio, data centers that support those cloud services, and the customers using those services. That unique pers… Continue reading Microsoft’s Cyber Defense Ops Center Shares Best Practices