Category Archives: Trump White House

White House announces federal cyber strategy, vows to go on offensive

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The White House announced a new national cybersecurity strategy Thursday in an effort raise federal network defenses and more aggressively deter foreign adversaries from threatening U.S. interests. “We’re going to do a lot of things offensively and I think our adversaries need to know that,” White House national security adviser John Bolton told reporters. Defensive measures are central to the document, but Bolton’s call with reporters emphasized offense. “We will identify, counter, disrupt, degrade, and deter behavior in cyberspace that is destabilizing and contrary to national interests, while preserving the United States’ overmatch in and through cyberspace,” Bolton said. The strategy is a template through which federal agencies can carry out their own cybersecurity mandates, according to Bolton. “I’m satisfied that this allows us the comprehensive look at strategy across the entire government,” he said. “Each agency knows its lane and is pursuing it vigorously. That’s true in the unclassified world; it’s […]

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Trump administration touts “extensive, historic” actions to secure elections

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Numerous Trump administration officials spent Thursday expounding upon the efforts the government is taking to curb Russian-linked actors’ efforts to interfere with the 2018 midterm elections. National security adviser John Bolton, for example, issued a vigorous defense of President Donald Trump’s “extensive, historic” efforts to strengthen the security of U.S. elections while offering lawmakers classified briefings on these efforts. In a rebuttal to congressional Democrats, who have criticized Trump’s election-security efforts as insufficient, Bolton asserted that National Security Council meetings on the subject in July and May were evidence of “a level of dedication and action with respect to this threat that far exceeds that of previous administrations.” In a letter to five Democratic senators, Bolton said the Trump administration is taking “unprecedented action to punish Russia for its efforts to disrupt the political and electoral processes core to American democracy and the American way of life.” The Senate Democrats had written Bolton asking the White […]

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As defense bill approaches finish line, future of Chinese company ZTE hangs in the balance

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When House and Senate negotiators sit down next week to iron out their differences in the annual defense bill, the fate of Chinese telecom giant ZTE will be a key issue. Select lawmakers from both chambers are headed to a conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal 2019. One notable discrepancy is ZTE-related language: Broadly speaking, the Senate version calls for stricter rules that would curtail the Chinese company’s ability to do business in the U.S.. The House NDAA would restrict the Department of Defense and its contractors from procuring equipment from Chinese telecoms ZTE and Huawei. The Senate version, taking stock of ZTE’s continuous flouting of U.S. sanctions, would explicitly block ZTE from doing business in the country writ large. The Senate’s version of the NDAA, with the ZTE ban tucked into it, passed with broad bipartisan support, 85-10. […]

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Trump sends cyberwar strategy to Congress

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President Donald Trump has sent a cyberwarfare policy to Congress that should outline how the administration will tackle some of the field’s most vexing issues – including launching hacking operations and deterring adversaries. Trump enclosed the document, which was not made public, in a letter Thursday to the House and Senate committees that oversee the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State. The fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act tasked the White House with developing a “multi-prong” cybersecurity policy covering defensive and offensive operations. The policy should include measures to defend against “cyber activities that are carried out against infrastructure critical to the political integrity, economic security, and national security of the United States,” the NDAA states. The White House policy is one of several new cybersecurity measures mandated by the NDAA, including a requirement that the Pentagon more closely communicate with Congress on sensitive, military-led cyber-operations. The new […]

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Watchdog complains about consultant helping Nielsen’s DHS confirmation

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A government ethics watchdog is calling for an investigation into potential violations of federal laws and ethics regulations by Homeland Security secretary nominee Kirstjen Nielsen, following CyberScoop reports that a consultant representing companies with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake had volunteered to help run her confirmation preparation. The nonprofit, nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center has asked federal officials — including Attorney General Jeff Sessions — to probe the matter. Government departments aren’t allowed to accept voluntary work, for the same reason officials cannot accept valuable gifts — because of the risk it might create an obligation that could be repaid with an official act, explained the center’s Brendan Fischer. “There’s a risk that such work would engender a feeling indebtedness on Nielsen’s part,” Fischer told CyberScoop, noting that DHS handed out $23 billion worth of contracts last year. “It appears that Nielsen has been guided through the confirmation process by an individual whose clients have hundreds […]

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Democrats call for watchdog to probe ‘glitzy’ DHS nomination party

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The inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security should investigate a “glitzy ceremony” held at the White House to celebrate the nomination of Kirstjen Nielsen as DHS secretary, says the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. “Cabinet officials and corporate lobbyists enjoyed several hours of cocktails and live entertainment,” wrote Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., in a letter dated Thursday. “I find it hard to understand how a cocktail reception with corporate lobbyists benefits DHS’s mission, particularly at a time when many parts of the country, especially Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, are reeling from the effects of deadly hurricanes,” he continued. Thompson asks Inspector General John Roth to investigate the Oct. 12 ceremony — for which the White House billed DHS $8,000, the lawmaker says — and “review the relevant policies for hosting events such as this, and the circumstances under which DHS may be charged.” The congressman also pronounces it “troubling” that […]

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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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The Trump administration is looking for its ‘cyber moonshot’

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Tech advisors to the Trump administration are looking for a cybersecurity “moonshot” — a single national target that will be a game-changer in online security. But a meeting of a blue-ribbon telecommunications panel this week suggested that defining such a goal is still some way off. “This is the beginning of a conversation,” Scott Charney, vice chairman of the president’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee told CyberScoop during a break in the proceedings at a public meeting Wednesday. “This current approach [to cybersecurity] isn’t working,” added Charney, a former Justice Department cyber prosecutor and current Microsoft VP. “The breaches keep on happening.” NSTAC met in the shadow of the recent Equifax breach — in which hackers were able to steal Social Security numbers for over 145 million Americans, by exploiting an unpatched vulnerability in their web application software. The committee was unable to achieve a quorum and so did not conduct any formal business. Charles […]

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OMB stakes out central role in cyber, IT modernization

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The White House Office of Management and Budget will be at the center of the Trump administration’s move to modernize and secure federal computer networks, the government’s senior-most IT official said Wednesday. The agency is at the hinge where several important IT initiatives meet the federal budgeting process, explained acting federal CIO Margie Graves. Not only does it help implement the Federal Information Security Modernization Act, or FISMA, but it also has new tasks under the cybersecurity executive order signed recently. Under the EO, every federal agency or department has to conduct a risk assessment using the Cybersecurity Framework developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and then submit it to the OMB director and the Homeland Security secretary. That process, she told the Public Sector Innovation Summit presented by VMware, was the essential underpinning for both security and modernization efforts because it identifies the areas where investment is needed.  It also had the added benefit […]

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