Anne Neuberger, director of the cybersecurity directorate at the National Security Agency and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, said NSA has begun a pilot program that could help small- and medium-sized defense companies improve their cybersecurity posture, Defense One reported Thursday.
The pilot allows some companies to work with third parties to ensure the security of their domain name system use.
“We began a pilot called secure DNS,” she told the publication in an interview. “Our analysis highlighted that using secure DNS would reduce the ability for 92% of malware attacks both from command and control perspective, deploying malware on a given network.”
Neuberger said her office partnered with the Department of Defense’s chief information officer to implement the pilot to understand threat actors’ efforts to target the defense industrial base and ways to protect against potential attacks.
She noted that NSA wants the pilot to help identify a provider that would offer a secure DNA service and encourage small- and medium-sized businesses to adopt it.