Jen Easterly, CISA at Billington Cybersecurity Summit

Two of the Federal government’s top cybersecurity officials praised a new White House report this week that offers four recommendations to fortify the resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure – including establishing performance goals and ramping up funding for agencies that oversee the sectors. […]

The much-anticipated $1 trillion Senate bipartisan infrastructure bill unveiled on August 1 shows big cybersecurity funding wins for state and local governments with a $1 billion for a cybersecurity grant program, and electric utilities that will be receiving $1.25 billion through a cybersecurity grant program to protect the electric grid. […]

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cybersecurity

Recent hacks on localities’ water supply have shown the importance of cybersecurity in the water infrastructure. Witnesses sounded the alarm about water infrastructure cybersecurity and called for training and funding investments at a July 21 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing. […]

capitol washington dc senate house congress-min

The Senate Budget Committee’s agreement reached late July 13 on a $3.5 trillion “soft” infrastructure funding package will help pave the way for Congress to consider the $1.2 trillion bipartisan compromise infrastructure agreement reached last month between the White House and a group of ten senators from both parties. […]

President Biden

President Biden said today he was “optimistic” after speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the United States government’s expectations for cooperation from Russia in the event of ransomware attacks that emanate from Russian territory. […]

President Biden

President Biden on June 26 pledged his support for a separate voting track in Congress for legislation containing a $1.2 trillion compromise infrastructure agreement that the White House reached last week with a bipartisan group of senators. […]

An infrastructure deal reached today by the White House and a bipartisan group of senators features a potentially huge Federal funding bump for cybersecurity as part of a larger “resiliency” section of the agreement, although details of the scope of the cybersecurity portion remain murky until further information about the plan becomes public. […]

With the focus turning to securing critical infrastructure and a backdrop of an increased number of cyberattacks, a survey of the cybersecurity in the water and waste management sector shows a number of facilities with incomplete cybersecurity programs, the Water Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) found in an April 2021 study. […]

Cybersecurity

The Biden administration is pushing hard to help fight the rise of ransomware attacks on private industry, and the White House is taking steps on multiple fronts to work with the private sector to combat the issue. […]

Joe Biden

The continued flurry of high-profile ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure targets in the United States is climbing the ladder of presidential priorities – with President Biden saying it’s on the agenda for his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this month, and White House officials confirming that cryptocurrency will be part of a new examination of global corruption. […]

The Biden administration is publicly demonstrating its willingness to lend Federal help to respond to a variety of ransomware assaults against critical infrastructure sectors – the latest involving a cyberattack against JBS USA, the world’s largest meatpacker, that forced the company reportedly to shut down nine of its plants. […]

White House

Action on the Biden administration’s $1.7 trillion infrastructure spending proposal that debuted in late March as the $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan is sliding well into June as the White House and Republican senators have traded offers and counteroffers on the legislation, but still remain deeply divided on the scope of the bill and its price tag. […]

Cybersecurity

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on March 31 previewed six “sprints” planned by DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) component throughout 2021 to bolster Federal cybersecurity across a range of areas including ransomware, industrial control system (ICS) security, and workforce development. […]

CISA
broadband

The Biden administration is proposing that the Federal government take a giant leap into the national broadband service market – traditionally the province of the private sector – in order to close persistent service availability and affordability gaps across the United States. […]

Biden
cybersecurity

It’s hard enough sometimes just keeping up with the challenges of cybersecurity in the big headline-news cases – think SolarWinds in recent months or the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) intrusion several years back. But the more you talk with experts in cybersecurity, the more it becomes clear that exploitable gaps in the network armor are nearly limitless, and that plugging those gaps requires innovative security in the spaces that remain off the radar for many. […]

NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a new guide, NISTIR 8170, to provide Federal agencies with different approaches to leveraging the Cybersecurity Framework to address common cyber problems. […]

Department of Homeland Security DHS

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released separate draft requests for proposal (RFPs) – one for its legacy voice system and one for its data network – under the General Services Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract program, an industry source told MeriTalk. […]

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Identification and Notification Act of 2020 (H.R. 5680) could slightly lower the deficit, but not by a significant amount. The bill, introduced by Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I. on Jan. 27, would authorize the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to issue administrative subpoenas in rare […]

Sens. Margaret Wood Hassan, D-N.H., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., signed a letter requesting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provide full funding to two key Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISAC). […]

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