Rob Joyce, cybersecurity director at the National Security Agency, said the federal government should further strengthen information sharing with industry to prevent cyberattacks by providing private sector entities access to declassified information to carry out actionable cyber defense efforts, Nextgov reported Wednesday.
“We can take and understand a threat, and get it to that ecosystem at an unclassified level,” Joyce, a two-time Wash100 awardee, said at an event Tuesday.
“And that’s the key, because if I give a company a secret at a classified level, most of the time, even if the person receiving it is able to receive it at that level, the people who action it aren’t,” he added.
Joyce discussed how NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center works to help deter cyberattacks and threat actors by serving as a hub for the agency to share unclassified intelligence information with industry.
Defense One reported that Joyce highlighted the importance of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and that NSA will work with Congress, the FBI and other agencies to renew the authority.
“So FISA Section 702 is up for renewal this year. And it is a vital source of intelligence. It is an authority that lets us do collection against a known foreign entity who chooses to use U.S. infrastructure,” Joyce said.
“It makes sure that we don’t afford the same protections to those foreign malicious actors who are on our infrastructure as we do the Americans who live here,” he added.
The NSA cyber chief also talked about security concerns with video-sharing platform TikTok and artificial intelligence tools at the event.