James Comey: FBI Must Be ‘Digitally Literate’ to Combat Cyber Threats

FBI Director James Comey has outlined several strategies the law enforcement agency plans to employ in order to counter cyber threats.

Comey told a Fordham University cybersecurity conference Wednesday the FBI’s effort to combat the cyber threat landscape requires every component of the agency “to be digitally literate.”

He said the agency intends to focus on the criminal syndicates and international operations in order to identify where to prioritize resources.

“And so we’re going to assign this work not based on some notion of physical fixed jurisdiction or venue. We’re going to assign it where the talent is,” Comey added.

He also the New York audience that the FBI will assign up to four other offices to support the primary assigned office under what Comey described as “the cyber threat team model.”

“We’re going to forward-deploy more and more cyber special agents of the FBI and intelligence analysts of the FBI in our foreign partners’ offices around the world to make sure that our battle rhythm tries to keep up with the threat that’s moving that fast,” Comey said.

“And the second thing we’re going to do is, within the government, try to continue to improve at getting our act together at dividing up our resources between organizations in the government,” he added.

Comey also said the FBI wants to equip state and local partners with resources to respond to cyber threats.

“And so one of the things we’re trying to do is work with the Secret Service to offer training to the 17,000 state and local law enforcement organizations in this country to equip their people to be digitally literate,” he said.

Comey also highlighted what he called the “importance of increasing our cooperation and improving our cooperation with our private partners.”