Category Archives: National Security Council

Biden team taps NSA Cybersecurity Director Anne Neuberger for NSC

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Anne Neuberger, the National Security Agency’s cybersecurity director, will be joining the Biden administration as deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, the Biden transition team announced Wednesday. Neuberger has been serving in her role as the director of the year-old Cybersecurity Directorate at the Pentagon’s foreign signals intelligence agency for just over a year, but she has a track record of leadership at the NSA. She has previously served as the lead on the NSA’s task force to counter Russian threats to U.S. elections, previously known as the “Russia Small Group,” as well as its chief risk officer. She has also overseen cyber-operations at the NSA during her time serving as assistant deputy director of the Operations Directorate. Neuberger’s selection could be a signal the Biden administration intends to prioritize cybersecurity issues at the NSC. The Biden transition team has already announced a whole slew of other […]

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Biden transition fills some top cybersecurity personnel spots

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The incoming Biden administration has spent the week heralding some of its cybersecurity-related personnel decisions, even as a couple key jobs remain a question mark. The Biden transition on Friday announced a slew of National Security Council picks. Among them is Caitlin Durkovich to serve as senior director for resilience and response, reflecting a similar role she once held at a Department of Homeland Security division that Congress later renamed and reorganized as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Andrea Kendall-Taylor will take the job of senior director for Russia and Central Asia, areas she worked on during a prior government stint in the intelligence community. “This outstanding team of dedicated public servants will be ready to hit the ground running on day one to address the transnational challenges facing the American people — from climate to cyber,” said Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. “They reflect the very best of our […]

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White House to release maritime cybersecurity update

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The National Security Council is planning to issue a cybersecurity update to the U.S. government’s national maritime security strategy Tuesday, multiple senior administration officials tell CyberScoop. The update, which administration officials first teased last September, will prompt federal agencies to develop more streamlined cybersecurity standards for organizations in the maritime transportation system (MTS), which includes seaports, vessel owners and operators and terminal operators, according to administration strategy documents obtained by CyberScoop. The update from the White House also is aimed at promoting more information-sharing on maritime cyberthreats with the private sector, streamlining the information-sharing process and prompting the U.S. government to establish maritime cybersecurity-focused workforce programs. The NSC is releasing the National Maritime Cybersecurity Plan as part of a recognition that there are gaps in U.S. maritime security, officials said. A chief concern is that disruptions to ports and shipping could send shockwaves through the U.S. economy. More directly for […]

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White House quietly activates cyber emergency response

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In the wake of the SolarWinds breach, the National Security Council has activated an emergency cybersecurity process that is intended to help the government plan its response and recovery efforts, according to White House officials and other sources. The activation of the process is a sign of just how seriously the Trump administration is taking the foreign espionage operation, former NSC officials told CyberScoop. The process, which is rooted in a presidential directive issued during the Obama administration known as PPD-41, establishes a Cyber Unified Coordination Group (UCG) that is intended to help the U.S. government coordinate multiple agencies’ responses to the significant hacking incident. The UCG is generally led by the Department of Justice — through the FBI and the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force — as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security. “This cyberattack is the exact type […]

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White House official, former Nunes aide Michael Ellis named NSA general counsel

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The Pentagon’s general counsel has selected Michael Ellis, a White House official and former Republican aide on Capitol Hill who has faced accusations of politicizing intelligence, to be the National Security Agency’s next general counsel, according to a U.S. government official familiar with the matter. In recent months the White House has been repeatedly pressuring the Department of Defense’s general counsel to slate Ellis, who served as Intelligence Committee counsel to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., as the top attorney at the NSA, a person familiar with the matter told CyberScoop. The appointment of Ellis to a traditionally non-partisan role could raise questions about whether President Donald Trump is seeking to plant political allies throughout the U.S. government before his final 70 days as a “lame duck” president come to a close. The news comes at a turbulent time for the Trump administration. Trump has refused to concede the election, and in recent hours announced he had […]

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GAO criticizes rollout of two key Trump administration cyber initiatives

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In September 2018, the White House announced a new federal cybersecurity strategy to make critical infrastructure more resilient to hacking, shore up supply chains and “identify, counter, disrupt, degrade and deter behavior in cyberspace.” The ambitious document, which the White House described as the United States’ “first fully articulated cyber strategy” in 15 years, aimed to reduce the occurrence of damaging cyberattacks on U.S. interests. Two years later, a review of the strategy by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional agency, has found key gaps in the way the White House is trying to execute that plan. In the face of persistent cyber-threats from foreign powers, the Trump administration’s effort to mobilize resources to fix important U.S. security weaknesses risks coming up short without a better plan to execute the strategy, GAO said in a report published Tuesday. The National Security Council’s implementation plan for the strategy does not include […]

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Grant Schneider steps down as federal CISO, heads to private sector

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Grant Schneider, who has spent nearly three decades in the federal government, is leaving his post as the Trump administration’s chief information security officer for the private sector. Schneider is joining the Washington, D.C., office of law firm Venable as a senior director of cybersecurity services, the firm said in a statement Tuesday. Ari Schwartz, a Venable executive who worked in the Obama administration, lauded Schneider’s work as a federal official on supply chain security and encryption. Schneider spent more than 20 years at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s spying arm, culminating in a multi-year tenure as chief information officer. He was also a senior official at the Office of Personnel Management in 2015 and 2016 as the agency continued to cope with the fallout of its massive 2014 data breach. At the National Security Council, Schneider was influential in cybersecurity policymaking. He headed the Vulnerabilities Equities Process, the […]

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The case for a National Cyber Director

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Although the aftershocks of COVID-19 will last for years, one result is already clear — shifting more activity online has increased our society’s digital dependence even faster than expected. The federal government’s cybersecurity capabilities need to keep pace. Although some Federal agencies, particularly the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), have made significant improvements over the last few years, at least three factors impede government-wide progress. First, cybersecurity’s cross-cutting nature does not fit with the U.S. government’s bureaucratic structure. Second, agencies are not incentivized to sustain the degree of coordination required for effective cybersecurity. Third, a lack of central leadership hinders effective incident response. No single policy action will solve these problems, but creating a National Cyber Director along the lines of what the Cyberspace Solarium Commission recommends would be a good start. Bureaucracies prefer issues that fit neatly into one organization’s mission. […]

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Lawmakers call for cyber leadership as they introduce bill that would create White House post

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After then-national security adviser John Bolton eliminated the position of White House cybersecurity coordinator in the spring of 2018, Democratic lawmakers quickly introduced a bill to restore the position, arguing that it was crucial for the White House to show leadership on the issue. The bill never went anywhere. But two years later, the push for creating a top White House cybersecurity post is gaining fresh traction, with support from Republicans. A bipartisan group of House members on Thursday introduced new legislation that would create a “national cyber director” at the White House. The director would serve a similar role to the coordinator, but have more authority to examine cybersecurity budgets and oversee national incident response. Instituting a national cyber director was a key recommendation put forth by the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission, which released a report in March arguing for big changes to U.S. cybersecurity policy. Two leading members […]

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Bolton book could cause ‘irreparable damage’ to U.S. signals intelligence, NSA Director says

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John Bolton’s tell-all on his time serving as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser could reveal classified information and damage U.S. signals intelligence collection if published, the National Security Agency Director, Gen. Paul Nakasone, said Wednesday. “At the request of the National Security Council legal adviser I have reviewed a limited portion of [Bolton]’s draft manuscript, and have identified classified information in that portion of the manuscript,” Nakasone said in a signed affidavit. “Compromise of this information could result in the permanent loss of a valuable SIGINT [signals intelligence] source and cause irreparable damage to the U.S. SIGINT system.” Nakasone’s assessment of Bolton’s book was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington alongside an emergency Department of Justice filing seeking to block the release of Bolton’s book. The Trump administration sued Bolton on Tuesday in an attempt to delay the memoir’s publication, alleging that his book contained classified information and that […]

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