Category Archives: Robert Joyce

Trump advisers: key industries need separate systems in wake of cataclysmic event

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The U.S. needs special communications networks for its most critical industries, including physically separate fiber systems and spectrum reserved for them to use in an emergency, to guard against a major attack, an industry advisory committee recommended in a report Tuesday. “We find ourselves in a pre-9/11-level cyber moment, with a narrow and fleeting window of opportunity to coordinate our resources effectively” before a major attack, states the report, which was adopted Tuesday by the National Infrastructure Advisory Council. The report was mandated in President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on cybersecurity. As the report notes, “Cyber is the sole arena where private companies are the front line of defense in a nation-state attack on U.S. infrastructure,” and the council — made up mostly of current or former business executives, with a few former government officials thrown in — is designed to help bring to government deliberations the perspective of those private companies that run […]

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White House cyber czar says norms push will move to small group of allies

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The Trump administration will continue its predecessor’s push for the adoption of global cyber norms, but is putting efforts to do so through the United Nations on the back burner, preferring instead to work with small groups of allied countries, White House cybersecurity czar Rob Joyce said Tuesday. This new “coalition of the willing” strategy seems at odds with the plans apparently developed last week for a joint cybersecurity framework with Russia to combat outside interference and hacking of elections. “We’re going to be working with like-minded countries to start to enforce the norms that we’ve talked about” — like the one outlawing attacks on critical infrastructure in peacetime — Joyce told a standing-room only crowd at the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s cybersecurity R&D showcase. “We’ve got to raise the cost on the attackers … [We’ve got] to start pushing at those norms we know need to be enforced and following up so […]

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Bill reforming NSA hacking policy has skeptics in White House

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The Trump administration has concerns about a proposed reform of the policy process the U.S. government uses when deciding how to handle newly discovered software vulnerabilities known as zero days, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Rob Joyce told a meeting of tech leaders in Boston this week. The vulnerability equities process, or VEP, is how government officials decide whether to disclose such flaws to the software manufacturer, so they can be patched and all users made safe; or to secretly keep it and use it to spy on U.S. adversaries. Former officials said the process needs overhauling and lawmakers dropped a bill to codify it — the Protecting our Ability To Counter Hacking, or PATCH, Act. The bill would codify the VEP into law, establishing a review board that would publish guidelines explaining the basis for its decisions. Joyce, addressing the launch of CyberMA, a Massachusetts affiliate of the national CyberUSA initiative on Monday, said Trump administration officials were engaging with […]

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White House: Cyber executive order is close, will be ‘intertwined’ with federal IT modernization

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The Trump administration is “close” to unveiling its cybersecurity executive order and is carefully aligning its policy in that area with plans for modernizing federal IT networks, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Robert Joyce said Monday in his first public comments since taking office. “We must make sure that innovation and cybersecurity are intertwined,” Joyce told an international cybersecurity conference at Georgetown University. He said the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was working with White House tech policy aides Chris Lidell and  Reed Cordish on “a major effort” in Kushner’s newly minted Office of American Innovation to develop “approaches for the president’s consideration to modernize federal IT systems, retire outdated systems and move to shared services.” White House staff would ensure that the two initiatives “are closely aligned,” Joyce said. “I get to participate in, my staff gets to participate in those meetings,” he said of the innovation office’s work on federal IT. Asked whether modernization policy […]

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