Chris Inglis, the Biden administration’s nominee for the role of national cyber director, and Jen Easterly, the president’s pick to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), both described ransomware as a “scourge” that poses a threat to national security and suggested ways on how to protect critical infrastructure during a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, CyberScoop reported.
Inglis said during the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that the U.S. government and its allies should “remove the sanctuary [to ransomware criminals] and bring to bear consequences on those who hold us at risk.”
He cited the importance of making critical systems defensible and how security personnel can mitigate threats through software patching, multifactor authentication, network segmentation, and other basic cyber practices.
Easterly mentioned CISA’s role in providing threat information and technical guidance and the need to make some standards mandatory to improve cyber protection of critical infrastructure.
“There probably is some sort of role for making some of these standards mandatory, to include notification,” Easterly said. “I do think it’s important that if there’s a significant cyber incident, that critical infrastructure companies have to notify the federal government, in particular CISA. We have to be able to warn other potential victims.”
If you want to know more about the latest updates about the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, then check out Potomac Officers Club’s CMMC Forum coming up on June 16th.
CMMC Accreditation Body Chairman Karlton Johnson will serve as the keynote speaker for the Forum to provide his overview and vision of the CMMC Rollout as well as the top priorities for the board and how industry feedback will help to improve the vision behind how the organization develops for the first 100 days.
To register for this virtual forum and view other upcoming events, visit the POC Events page.
