A new Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center is being created under the auspices of the director of national intelligence.
The center will serve a similar function for cyber as the National Counterterrorism Center does for terrorism, Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, said during a keynote speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
A Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency image represents DARPA’s High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems program, which seeks to create technology for constructing systems that are functionally correct and satisfy safety and security properties. (Department of Defense Graphic/Released)
The NCTC, established in 2004, puts into action a 9/11 Commission recommendation — to break “the older mold of national government organizations” and “be a center for joint operational planning and joint intelligence, staffed by personnel from the various agencies.”
“No single government entity,” Monaco said, “is responsible for producing coordinated cyber threat assessments, ensuring that information is shared rapidly among existing cyber centers and other [government] elements, and supporting the work of operators and policymakers with timely intelligence about the latest cyber threats and threat actors.”
New Center Intended to Fill Gaps
The Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, she added, is intended to fill these gaps, analyzing and integrating information already collected under existing authorities, and is intended to enable centers that already perform cyber functions to do their jobs more effectively.
President Barack Obama‘s new budget backs up the commitment to fight cyber threats with $14 billion to protect critical infrastructure, government networks and other systems, Monaco said.
Safeguarding Americans online, she added, requires that the government work with the private sector “to enhance the security of what has become a vast cyber ecosystem.”
A Precondition of Success
Though the private sector shouldn’t rely on the government to solve its cybersecurity problems, the government won’t leave the private sector to fend for itself, Monaco said, calling partnership a precondition of success.
“To the private sector, we’ve made it clear that we will work together,” she added. “We’re not going to bottle up our intelligence. If we have information about a significant threat to a business, we’re going to do our utmost to share it.”
Within 24 hours of learning about the Sony Pictures Entertainment attack, Monaco said, the U.S. government pushed out information and malware signatures to the private sector to update its cyber defenses.
“We want this flow of information to go both ways,” she said.
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