Page 10 - FCW, November, December 2018

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Senate OKs
new DHS
cyber agency
On Oct. 3, the Senate passed its own version of legislation that would rename and elevate the Department of Homeland Security’s National Protection and Programs Directorate. The House passed its version of the bill in December 2017.
The Senate bill is less ambitious than the vision shared by DHS officials two years ago. It would change NPPD’s name to the moderately less clunky Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and emphasize that it is the go-to agency for IT security and civilian cybersecurity issues.
White House releases National Cyber Strategy
$25.5B is the ceiling for the Army’s Worldwide Logistics Support Services-Contractor Logistics Support contract
The Trump administration released its long-awaited National Cyber Strategy in September and promised a greater willingness to deploy offensive operations against nation-states and criminal groups in the digital domain.
In a call with reporters, National Security Advisor John Bolton cited a number of high-profile cyberattacks over the past two years as examples of how the U.S. and other governments are under siege from nation-states and criminal hacking groups.
in protecting elections, defending critical infrastructure, and coordinating and sharing cyberthreat data with the private sector. Bolton said DOD’s strategy reflects its new role as defined by the president’s national strategy.
For the past two years, the government has been struggling to create a unified approach to cybersecurity as the topic has become increasingly relevant to a large number of national security and foreign policy issues. The Department of Homeland
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November/December 2018 FCW.COM
Christopher Krebs
Bolton confirmed press reports that President Donald Trump had officially rescinded the Obama-era Presidential Policy Directive 20, which instituted a complex interagency process for offensive cyber operations. It will be replaced with a new classified directive that lays out a very different approach, Bolton added.
Although he declined to discuss specifics, he said the Defense Department, U.S. Cyber Command and “other relevant departments” will be charged with taking the fight to malicious cyber actors in order to deter future attacks.
“We’re going to do a lot of things offensively, and our adversaries need to know that,” he added. “We’re not just on defense as we have been...for a period of time.”
The White House’s strategy was released the same week that DOD issued its own cyber strategy. The latter envisions a robust role for the Pentagon and U.S. Cyber Command
Security and DOD have emerged as two of the biggest players in the defensive and offensive cybersecurity arenas and have sometimes engaged in turf battles as each department attempted to satisfy Congress and policymakers who have asked for more aggressive action.
Bolton said it took time to delineate the roles for various agencies, but now “each agency knows its lane and is pursuing it vigorously.”
Bolton also addressed questions about the controversial elimination of the cybersecurity coordinator position at the White House. He said the National Security Council structure was rife with duplication and overlap, and he was determined to change that. The council has two senior directors charged with implementing and coordinating cybersecurity policy, and Bolton said other major policy areas — such as intelligence, counter-proliferation and defense — also have senior directors but no top-level coordinators.
— Derek B. Johnson
agency in the federal government,” wrote Christopher Krebs, the DHS undersecretary in charge of NPPD, on Twitter. “This will go a long way in our ability to defend the nation against cyberthreats.”
Some in DHS have said one of the most important changes would be the elevation from a headquarters component to a full operating agency, with a director and a higher degree of autonomy in the departmental hierarchy.
DHS officials surely wanted more than what’s contained in CISA, but the change is viewed as an important step for its branding power. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said CISA was needed to communicate clearly to stakeholders inside and outside government that “we are the national cybersecurity agency.”
— Derek B. Johnson
“Thank you to Sens. Ron Johnson and Claire McCaskill and the rest of the Senate for voting to create the first cybersecurity
“We’re going to do a lot of things offensively, and our adversaries
need to know that.” — NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR JOHN BOLTON