Category Archives: Sen. Ron Johnson

‘Aggressive posture’ defines election security work, DHS official tells senators

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A senior Department of Homeland Security official on Tuesday defended its work to help secure voting systems before midterm elections, but a top Democratic lawmaker worried those efforts were insufficient. DHS has “adopted an aggressive posture” to help state officials secure their voting infrastructure and will do all it can ahead of Election Day, DHS’s Jeanette Manfra told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. At the same time, she said, the department has yet to detect Russian cyber-activity on state systems this election season. DHS will use the $26 million in additional election-security funding provided by the March omnibus to increase vulnerability assessments and other services it offers states, Manfra told CyberScoop after the hearing. That money is separate from the $380 million the bill allocated directly to individual states to do things like upgrade their computer systems and train officials in cybersecurity. But Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the committee’s […]

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HHS faces flak over new cyber center

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The Department of Health and Human Services’ new national cybersecurity intelligence-sharing clearinghouse appears to duplicate the role of similar entities in the federal government and in the private sector, say key lawmakers and some leaders in the health care industry. Critics say the creation of the Healthcare Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, or HCCIC, is moving the goalposts for the industry, which was answering the U.S. government’s call to create a private-sector cyberthreat-sharing ecosystem. HCCIC is being modeled after the Department of Homeland Security’s 24-hour watch center, the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, or NCCIC — and some fret it may duplicate its functions. Defenders of the new clearinghouse are playing down the idea that HCCIC might be redundant. They argue it can provide a depth of specialist knowledge about the health care sector DHS lacks, and that the industry’s own membership-based information sharing organizations cannot match the universal service HCCIC will provide. The health care industry “feels […]

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