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Agencies faced 31,000 cyber incidents last year, but gave up no major breaches

The total number of incidents the government experienced last year dropped 12% from 2017, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

Federal agencies didn’t experience a single “major” cybersecurity incident in 2018, marking the first time in three years the government avoided such a severe digital incursion, according to a recent White House report.

Not one of the more than 31,000 cybersecurity incidents that agencies faced last year reached the “major incident” threshold, which is defined as an event that affects more than 100,000 individuals or otherwise causes “demonstrable harm” to the U.S, according to the Office of Management and Budget. The government fell victim to five major incidents in 2017 and 16 in 2016.

Overall, the total number of cyber events the government experienced dropped 12% from 2017, OMB officials told Congress in their annual report on the Federal Information Security Management Act.

While OMB called this downward trend “encouraging,” they warned that agencies shouldn’t let down their guard. Phishing and other email-based attacks remain a popular strategy for online bad actors, and the government is still struggling to attribute and label the thousands of attacks every year, officials said.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/08/agencies-faced-31000-cyber-incidents-last-year-gave-no-major-breaches/159290/

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Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity holds hearing to discuss responsibilities of the industrial base

On March 26, 2019, the Senate Armed Services’ Subcommittee on Cybersecurity held a hearing to receive testimony assessing how the Department of Defense’s (DoD) cybersecurity policies and regulations have affected the Defense Industrial Base (DIB).

To gain a better understanding of the DIB’s cybersecurity concerns, the Subcommittee invited William LaPlante, Senior Vice President and General Manager of MITRE’s National Security Sector; John Luddy, Vice President For National Security Policy at the Aerospace Industries Association; Christopher Peters, Chief Executive Officer of the Lucrum Group; and Michael MacKay, the Chief Technology Officer of Progeny Systems Corporation.

In their opening remarks, the Chairman of the Subcommittee, Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD), and Ranking Member, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), acknowledged industry concerns about the DoD’s lack of clarity and disparate implementation of cybersecurity regulations, such as guidance relating to DFARS 252.204-7012 (DFARS Cyber Rule or Rule) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-171.

Senator Rounds stated that he “expects [DoD] to come up with measured policies to make improvements in [cybersecurity]” and he “hope[s] DoD takes seriously the concerns of the DIB.”  He further noted that DoD “cannot simply apply increasingly stringent cybersecurity requirements on its contractors” and that “doing so without subsidy or assistance is unlikely to particularly improve cybersecurity [for] the DIB” and would likely drive the most innovative small businesses out of the supply chain.  Senator Rounds called for putting a program in place to ensure the best possible protections for contractors regardless of size and referred to the “Achilles heel” of this issue as the desire to use a large number of small contractors while still needing to protect sensitive government information.  Later in the hearing, Senator Manchin expressed great concern over the cyber incidents experienced by DoD contractors and urged the witnesses to “tell [the Subcommittee] what you need . . . [the Subcommittee] is here to fix it and you’re here to tell us what’s broken.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.insidegovernmentcontracts.com/2019/03/senate-armed-services-subcommittee-on-cybersecurity-holds-hearing-to-discuss-the-responsibilities-of-the-defense-industrial-base/

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DoD task force addresses the growing threats to critical technology

Amid an alleged campaign of hacking by the Chinese government, efforts are taking place to prevent the exfiltration of data and protect sensitive information that is stored in the U.S. government and the defense-industrial base.

In a memo dated Oct. 24, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis announced the creation of the Protecting Critical Technology Task Force to safeguard critical American technology.

“Each year, American businesses lose hundreds of billions of dollars while our military superiority is challenged,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan said in a statement. “Together with our partners in industry, we will use every tool at our disposal to end the loss of intellectual property, technology and data critical to our national security.”

The PCTTF will report to Shanahan and Gen. Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the joint chief of staff. It includes representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Security Service, according to an industry official briefed on the matter.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2018/11/02/a-new-dod-task-force-addresses-the-growing-threats-to-critical-technology/

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Cyber supply chain task force to meet soon

A task force focused on reducing cybersecurity risks in the nation’s technology and communications supply chain will meet for the first time in the next few weeks, the Homeland Security Department announced last week.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced the task force’s creation during a cyber conference in New York in July during which she also announced the creation of a new Homeland Security division, the National Cyber Risk Management Center, focused on long-range cyber issues.

The task force will be chaired by private sector leaders but will be sponsored by the risk management center, according to a Homeland Security news release.

The task force will focus on government and industry supply chains and criminal and nation-state hacker efforts to compromise contractors and subcontractors deep within those supply chains, the department said.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2018/10/cyber-supply-chain-task-force-meet-soon/152429/

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Cyber Command’s acquisition authority still in its infancy

U.S. Cyber Command is still in the beginning stages of building out an acquisition capability.

Eight years after its launch and about two years after being granted limited acquisition authority from Congress, the command is still working to demonstrate that its wares and abilities make good use of funds and that it is capable of managing contracts, its acquisition executive said.

“I will say we are in our infancy from an acquisition perspective. We are putting the foundation of the personnel and the skills,” Stephen Schanberger said Sept. 6 at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit. “We’re in the beginning stages right now.”

In the fiscal 2016 defense authorization bill, Congress gave Cyber Command limited acquisition authority capped at $75 million with a sunsetting in 2021. Congressional aides have equated this authority to that of Special Operations Command, noting that they wanted to employ a crawl, walk, run mentality to make sure Cyber Command can execute it.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/cybercom/2018/09/07/cyber-commands-acquisition-authority-still-in-its-infancy/

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