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CISA’s Christopher Krebs has a two-year plan for his new cybersecurity agency, with China, supply chain and 5G as top priorities.
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Last November, the former, somewhat awkwardly named National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) was elevated within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to become the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) following enactment of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2018. CISA is responsible for protecting the country’s critical infrastructure from physical and cyber threats, overseeing a host of cybersecurity-related activities. This includes operating the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), which provides round-the-clock situational awareness, analysis, incident response and cyber defense capabilities to the federal government, state, local, tribal and territorial governments, the private sector and international partners.

CISA made its first prominent mark as an independent agency during the 35-day government shut-down when, on January 22, it issued an unexpected, and to some a startling, emergency directive ordering admins at most government agencies to protect their domains against a wave of attacks on the domain name system infrastructure (DNS). The directive was prompted by a number of DNS tampering efforts at multiple executive branch agencies. This malicious, complex and widespread campaign, dubbed DNSpionage by Cisco Talos, allowed suspected Iranian hackers to steal massive amounts of email passwords and other sensitive data from government offices and private sector entities.

Christopher Krebs serves as CISA’s first director. Krebs previously headed the NPPD as assistant secretary for infrastructure protection and joined DHS as a senior counselor to the secretary after working in the U.S. Government Affairs team as the director for cybersecurity at Microsoft.

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