Category Archives: Tom Bossert

Bolton reshuffle continues: Trump selects Coast Guard official as new homeland security adviser

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The Trump administration has picked Coast Guard Rear Adm. Douglas Fears as its new homeland security adviser, the White House announced Friday. Fears, with over 30 years of service in the Coast Guard, will replace Tom Bossert, who departed the White House two months ago at the request of incoming national security adviser John Bolton. “Doug Fears brings more than three decades of experience across a range of vital homeland security areas including counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and disaster response to the NSC,” Bolton said in a White House statement. “Doug will serve as the president’s homeland security adviser and my point person on an array of vital tasks ranging from overseeing the NSC Cybersecurity Directorate to coordinating the interagency efforts during disaster response.” An alumnus of the U.S. Naval War College, U.S. Coast Guard Academy and Harvard, Fears has been a special assistant to the president and senior director for resilience policy at […]

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National Security Council delays publication of cyber strategy over inclusion of ‘offensive’ measures

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A public summary of the Trump administration’s cyber deterrence strategy has been delayed because of internal disputes over retaliatory hacking measures, two current U.S. officials familiar with the matter tell CyberScoop. According to sources, several National Security Council staffers are seeking edits that further set ground rules for repercussions if an adversary attacks either the U.S. government or a U.S.-based company in cyberspace. The strategy’s outline was supposed to be released last Friday, but was held up after an NSC member requested it be postponed. The summary, although not as comprehensive as the strategy itself, is important because it would broadly inform the public about the government’s secret plan of action and signal to adversaries what behaviors cross a red line. Originally, the Trump administration mandated the cyber deterrence framework through the cybersecurity executive order released in May 2017. The report, a classified document that defines response options for when the country comes under […]

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U.S. Government Blames North Korea for WannaCry

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The United States government is officially blaming North Korea for the WannaCry ransomware outbreak in May that infected nearly a quarter-million computers in 150 countries. Continue reading U.S. Government Blames North Korea for WannaCry→

Bossert doubtful on ‘cyber moonshot,’ preferring to focus on risk management

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The problem with thinking about confronting the nation’s cybersecurity challenge in terms of a “cyber moonshot” is that it implies an end-state where the goal has been reached, White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said Tuesday. “The call to go to the moon had a clearly measurable end point,” just as do other analogies — for example eradicating a disease — he told reporters Tuesday on the sidelines of the Palo Alto Networks’ Ignite federal cyber conference. “In the cyber space, I think it’s going to be a more appropriate analogy to employ a risk-management set of terminology, the idea being that you will always have to manage that risk and mitigate it.” Cyberthreats wouldn’t end, Bossert pointed out, even if there was a game-changing national achievement such as that posited by the moonshot’s supporters.  The concept has been used with increasing frequency recently to describe a proposal for a huge national effort to […]

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Bossert promises new national cybersecurity strategy

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Trump administration officials are working on a new national cybersecurity strategy, building on the president’s executive order earlier this year, homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said Tuesday. “The president moved in his first months to put out an executive order to do the trench work necessary to put us in a position of putting forward a cybersecurity strategy,” he said at a Palo Alto Networks event Tuesday in Washington, D.C. “As soon as we’re prepared to issue a strategy that will be beneficial to the government and the nation, we’ll do so.” During a conversation on stage with Palo Alto Networks CEO Mark McLaughlin, Bossert said he was surprised and disappointed that the 2008 Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative he had helped craft during his time serving President George W. Bush still appeared to be the blueprint for U.S. strategy in cyberspace. “If you had told me that ten years later, I’d come […]

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New cybersecurity partnership makes it easier for Israeli companies to sell to U.S. authorities

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The United States and Israel unveiled a new cybersecurity partnership on Monday aimed at “stopping adversaries in networks and identifying ways to hold bad actors responsible,” according to White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert. Bossert announced the “Israeli-U.S. bilateral cyber working group” at the opening of the Cyber Week 2017 conference in Tel Aviv. The group, which will meet this week, will be led by Rob Joyce, the White House’s cybersecurity coordinator, and Eviatar Matania, the director general of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate. Members will include an unspecified number of representatives from across the U.S. and Israeli military, criminal justice and foreign relations establishments. Joyce previously ran the U.S. National Security Agency’s Tailored Access Operations (NSA TAO), the spy agency’s offensive division. Matania has helped shape Israeli cybersecurity policy for the past several years but has a private sector pedigree that includes tech and venture capital. “The meetings this week will focus on a […]

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Trump signs long-awaited cybersecurity executive order

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President Trump signed an executive order on cybersecurity Thursday, saying his administration will begin to manage cyber-risk across the U.S. government as a whole, hold agency heads personally responsibility for the protection of their networks and place modernization of federal IT at the heart of efforts to bolster computer security. “We spend a lot of time and inordinate money protecting antiquated and outdated systems,” said Thomas Bossert, the president’s homeland security adviser, who made a surprise appearance at the podium during the daily White House press briefing to announce the signing. The EO, which had originally been scheduled to be signed in January — only to be pulled the day of the planned signature — has been circulating in increasingly detailed draft form since then, but the signing Thursday came out of the blue on a day the White House continued to struggle with the fallout from the president’s shock decision to fire FBI Director James […]

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Software vulnerability disclosures by NSA will continue under Trump, officials say

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The disclosure process that governs how and when federal agencies should tell tech firms about flawed computer code is in no immediate danger of termination under the Trump administration, current and former U.S. officials said. Flawed code by its very nature offers vulnerabilities that can be targeted by hackers. Knowledge of these vulnerabilities — especially those […]

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