Alejandro Mayorkas

DHS creates Cyber Safety Review Board to review significant…

The CSRB will advise the President and Department of Homeland Security director, as well as review major security events starting with the Log4j exploits.

Following President Biden’s cybersecurity executive order issued last May, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on February 3 the creation of the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB). This public-private initiative is charged with reviewing and assessing significant cybersecurity incidents across government and the private sector. “The CSRB will provide a unique forum for collaboration between government and private sector leaders who will deliver strategic recommendations to the President and the Secretary of Homeland Security,” DHS said in announcing the statement.

The CSRB will start with 15 top cybersecurity leaders from the federal government and the private sector, including Robert Silvers, DHS undersecretary for policy, who will serve as chair, and Heather Adkins, Google’s senior director for security engineering, who will serve as deputy chair. DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) will manage, support and fund the board. CISA Director Jen Easterly is responsible for appointing CSRB members, in consultation with Silvers, and convening the board following significant cybersecurity events.

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

 

Alejandro Mayorkas

TSA to issue cybersecurity requirements for US rail, aviation…

New rules include reporting incidents to CISA and naming cybersecurity leads, but experts and industry representatives cite lack of input.

After issuing cybersecurity requirements for pipeline companies via two directives earlier this year, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) will now also issue cybersecurity requirements for rail systems and airport operators. The two pipeline directives followed a high-profile ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline that shut off oil flow to the East Coast in May, sparking gas shortages and panic buying.

“TSA’s broad responsibilities cover security at our airports, highways, and traffic management systems, pipelines, mass transit terminals and hubs, and subways and metros that carry billions of passengers every year,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in announcing the new regulations yesterday. “Whether by air, land, or sea, our transportation systems are of utmost strategic importance to our national and economic security.”

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.

Photo by Iwan Shimko on Unsplash

Alejandro Mayorkas

Tech giants pledge at least $30 billion to improve…

Technology, financial, and education leaders commit to a wide range of initiatives to enhance the nation’s cybersecurity posture in collaboration with the Biden Administration.

Industry leaders from the technology, financial, and education sectors have pledged a wide range of private-sector initiatives to tackle the nation’s cybersecurity problems. Those efforts include increasing the cybersecurity talent pool, boosting security awareness, and better securing the software supply chain. Microsoft pledged $20 billion and Google pledge $10 billion to develop more advanced security solutions in areas such as security by design, zero-trust, software supply chain, and open-source software.
That announcement came at a meeting hosted by the Biden Administration yesterday where private sector leaders met with national security and cabinet team members to tackle the nation’s cybersecurity problems. Among the attendees from the government were:

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan
Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese
Senior Advisor and Director of the Office of Public Engagement Cedric Richmond
Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger
National Cyber Director Chris Inglis
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.

Alejandro Mayorkas

Experts fear that Biden’s cybersecurity executive order will repeat…

President Biden is expected to issue an executive order soon in response to the SolarWinds and Exchange Server attacks. Leaked details suggest it might not focus on the most effective actions.

Since December, the US has been in a cybersecurity crisis following FireEye’s bombshell that Russian hackers implanted espionage malware throughout US private sector and government networks through the SolarWinds supply chain hack. Despite growing pressure from Congress, the still-new Biden administration has released few details on how it plans to respond to this massive intrusion or the more concerning discovery in January of widespread and scattershot attacks by Chinese state operatives on Microsoft Exchange email server software.

Although the administration reportedly won’t release a formal executive order (EO) addressing these and other cybersecurity matters for weeks, Alejandro Mayorkas, the new head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), did reveal that the administration is working on nearly a dozen actions for the order. Meanwhile, some details of the order have leaked, generating mostly skepticism among many top cybersecurity professionals.

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.

Photo by Mackenzie Weber on Unsplash