Top cybersecurity officials of the Biden administration and technology company executives discussed ways to increase collaboration between the federal government and industry to strengthen U.S. cyber defenses in a meeting held Monday.
Government leaders including Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary and 2021 Wash100 Award recipient Alejandro Mayorkas and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly met with senior leaders representing a group of tech companies to include AT&T, Google, Cisco, Microsoft and VMware.
The meeting also involved members of CISA’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) program, which aims to facilitate collaboration between the public and private industry to address emerging cybersecurity threats.
“The JCDC brings together in one place the talent, expertise, and capabilities of the federal cybersecurity ecosystem with the ingenuity, innovation, and imagination of the private sector to plan and exercise against the most serious threats; and drive down risk to the nation at scale,” Easterly said.
Increasing the U.S. cybersecurity resilience is one of the top priorities at DHS, according to Mayorkas.
“We are taking proactive steps to elevate our operational cooperation with the private sector to new heights, prioritizing our shared goal of defending a secure digital future,” he added.