Cybersecurity efforts of the public-private collaboration praised by CISA director in their first year
In the past year, the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) has been instrumental in helping to limit cyber risk at scale, according to Jen Easterly, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The collaborative was established in response to a series of catastrophic cybersecurity events, including the SolarWinds nation-state attack in 2020, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in May 2021, and the Kaseya ransomware attack in July 2021.
The JCDC brings together top cyber, defense, and national security bodies, including U.S. Cyber Command, the FBI, National Security Agency, and CISA. This collaboration aims to address the significant gap between the U.S. government and private industry in their ability to rapidly share intelligence and counter sophisticated attacks from both criminal and advanced persistent threat actors operating in many cases on behalf of rival nations.
One of the key initiatives taken by the JCDC was the development of the Shields Up campaign related to the Russia invasion of Ukraine. The collaborative also assisted in mitigating major cybersecurity threats, such as the Log4Shell crisis in December 2021, the discovery of the Daxin malware in February, and the continued efforts to protect the nation's election infrastructure from nation-state threats ahead of the November midterm elections.
CISA has also released an elections toolkit through the JCDC to help state and local officials assess their readiness to protect against phishing, malware, and other threats. The expansion of JCDC comes at a time when sophisticated malware poses a threat to major critical infrastructure targets in the U.S. Recently, JCDC has expanded to include industrial control partners.
Allie Mellen, senior analyst, security and risk at Forrester, stated that JCDC and CISA have been transformational with regards to how the information security community views the federal government's interactions and understanding of cybersecurity. Jen Easterly, Director of CISA, praised the efforts of JCDC, stating that the old models of how the federal government works with private industry no longer work under the new threat landscape.
The member organizations of the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, besides US Cyber Command, FBI, and NSA, also include other government agencies and entities involved in cross-sector cyber defense and intelligence sharing, though specific additional organizations are not listed explicitly in the provided search results.
In conclusion, the JCDC has played a crucial role in enhancing cybersecurity efforts in the U.S. over the past year. As the threat landscape continues to evolve, the collaborative's role in protecting critical infrastructure and election systems will undoubtedly remain vital.
