The US government wants to prepare authorities and companies better for attacks from cyberspace. Your Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has set up an authority to prepare defense precautions.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, AT&T and Verizon, among others, want to participate. On the government side, the US Cyber Command, the National Security Agency, the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are involved.
The new Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) agency is to lead the development of cyber defense plans and coordinate and implement these with federal and local authorities and companies with the help of their know-how. Cyber risks are to be reduced, defense practiced and standardized, emerges from a communication from CISA.
Ransomware at the top of the priority list
Together with the companies involved so far, the JCDC should first take care of the fight against ransomware – i.e. crypto / blackmail trojans – especially from cloud service providers. To this end, a plan is to be developed on how the handling of such attacks can be coordinated.
The CISA was founded at the end of 2018 as an independent US federal agency, it is under the supervision of the Department of Homeland Security. Your job is to improve cybersecurity at all levels of government. The authority also takes care of communication in emergencies.
In 2019, CISA registered a 153 percent increase in ransomware attacks on federal, regional and local authorities compared to the previous year. Almost 1000 official bodies, educational and health institutions were affected. Overall, this resulted in damage of 7.5 billion US dollars.
(anw)
