Category Archives: NCCIC

DHS promotes from within to fill cyber deputy assistant secretary role

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Rick Driggers, one of two deputy directors at the Department of Homeland Security’s 24-hour watch operation, the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, has been promoted to be DHS deputy assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications, a DHS official confirmed Monday. Driggers is taking over the post vacated by DHS veteran Danny Toler, and once held by former Federal CISO Greg Touhill.  The official told CyberScoop Driggers “will gradually assume the responsibilities of his new position over the next few weeks.” In his new position, Driggers reports to Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications Jeannette Manfra. In a brief statement emailed to reporters, Manfra said she was “extremely grateful” to Toler. “He has done a great job keeping the ship afloat as the acting assistant secretary.  His contributions to the organization over the past five years will endure.  I believe the department is in a better place as a result of his work, […]

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Question for states: Why isn’t more DHS grant money funneled to cybersecurity?

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A House bill to reauthorize the Department of Homeland Security includes a requirement to study why state and local governments have not been using homeland security grant programs to fill the large gaps in their cybersecurity defenses. The requirement was added by voice vote during a markup of the bill by the House Homeland Security Committee as an amendment proposed by Rhode Island Democrat James Langevin. It requires figures on the amount of DHS grant money spent by state and local governments on cybersecurity over the past decade; and a report on “obstacles and challenges related to using grant funds to improve cybersecurity.” “In the [security, threat and risk] self-assessments they do, states consistently identify cyberattacks as one of their top-tier man-made threats, if not one of their top-tier risks overall. And they put cybersecurity at the top of the list of capability gaps they have,” explained a House aide familiar with […]

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WannaCry outbreak was first big test of HHS’s new cybersecurity center for health sector

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When the WannaCry computer worms crippled the British National Health Service last month, the response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was led by a new cybersecurity watch center, lawmakers heard Thursday. The Healthcare Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, “coordinated the response to WannaCry,” Steve Curren, director of resilience in the HHS Office of Emergency Management, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee. When the WannaCry worm struck, crippling dozens of British hospitals, HHS officials “took immediate action to engage [the] broader U.S. health sector and ensure that IT security specialists had the information they needed to protect against, respond to and report intrusions,” Curren said. The HCCIC, (pronounced “aitch-kick”) came online in May is modeled on the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center — a 24-hour watch center that pulls in real-time data from vital national industries like banking and telecommunications and distributes warnings and other information. […]

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Budget would boost DHS cyber efforts in NCCIC, CDM

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President Trump’s budget proposal, unveiled Tuesday, would boost spending on the Department of Homeland Security’s 24-hour digital-attack watch center by almost $50 million and more than double the funding for a governmentwide online security tools program to $279 million. The proposal would also treble the size of the tiny team of DHS cybersecurity advisers who work with key businesses across the country. Despite these increases, not every tech element of the department got its funding goosed. Research and development in the DHS Science and Technology Directorate was slashed by $100 million and the allocation for the CIO office was also down $60 million. In documents released by the department and the White House Office of Management and Budget, the administration says it is asking for $3.28 billion for DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate, which includes most of the department’s cyber functions. It would be an increase of $196 million over fiscal 2017. The […]

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U.S. warns of ’emerging’ global cyber-espionage campaign by Chinese hackers

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An “emerging” international cyber-espionage campaign by a group with suspected ties to the Chinese government is affecting a growing number of companies globally, according to a warning from the U.S. government. Cybersecurity researchers and intelligence analysts have been tracking the hacker group known as APT10 or MenuPass Group since at least 2009. In the past, the group has targeted construction, engineering, aerospace and telecom companies as well as government agencies in the U.S., Europe and Japan. APT10’s past activity suggests it acts in “support of Chinese national security goals, including acquiring valuable military and intelligence information as well as the theft of confidential business data to support Chinese corporations,” according to cybersecurity firm FireEye, which has extensively monitored and studied the group. The U.S. National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center continues to review APT10’s recent activity and said it is working with victims “across different sectors,” according to a U.S. Computer […]

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McAfee pushes government to craft improved cybersecurity game plans

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In the face of malware’s growth in both category and character, government experts joined private sector leaders Thursday to formulate better ways to tackle cybersecurity challenges. During McAfee’s 2017 Security Through Innovation Summit, both sides of the public and private sector relationship talked about changes needed at every aspect of the security ecosystem, from better information sharing to more automation to a total revamp of the government acquisition process. “We as an industry have been tackling this cybersecurity problem in the fundamentally wrong way,” said Brian Dye, McAfee’s executive vice president of products, at the event hosted by CyberScoop and FedScoop. Automation was a continuing theme Thursday, promoted not only as a way to address cybersecurity workforce shortages but also improve the consistency and reliability of network defenses. A panel of government speakers drew a distinction between tasks that could be made “automatic” — where no input was required — and […]

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Friction by design: FBI, DHS disagree on when to tell victims they’ve been hacked

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Competing interests exist between two of the predominant federal agencies tasked with stopping hackers from attacking the U.S., officials say, and that dynamic shapes how and when the government notifies Americans if they’ve been breached. The Homeland Security Department and FBI follow distinctly different missions, and this extends into cyberspace, according to John Felker, director of the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. NCCIC is DHS’s around-the-clock office for incident awareness and response. Occasionally, DHS’s efforts to rapidly deploy software updates and immediately notify a victim when a cybersecurity incident occurs clashes with the FBI’s work to fully investigate and ultimately prosecute cybercriminals, Felker said Thursday. “There’s always going to be some tension between our mission space at DHS, which is asset response, threat mitigation — stop the bleeding, if you will — and law enforcement’s threat response, which is to catch a bad guy and make a successful prosecution,” Felker said during McAfee’s […]

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