Policy Insights: U.S. Cyber Command Collaborates with Private Sector to Share Threat Insights

The U.S. Cyber Command has created a collaborative program with the private sector to share insights and information about critical cyber threats in an effort to further bolster national cybersecurity, according to reporting in FedScoop: Cyber Command creates forum with industry to share threat information. “The program, dubbed ‘Under Advisement,’ involves members of the command’s elite cyber national mission force (CNMF) — which is responsible for tracking and disrupting specific nation-state adversaries — sitting in chat rooms and disclosing threats with the cybersecurity sector, officials have said. These military personnel use their real names for the sake of transparency and actually talk to members of the private sector…”

Policy Insights:

David Stewart, CEO, Approov:

“This kind of initiative, where experts from different parts of the cyber eco-system share information, is vital to our safety. You might think that there is already plenty of data about cyber-attacks in the news but those stories usually only cover ‘what’ the outcome of a given cyber-attack was. The important, rarely revealed information, is the detail about how it was done. Sharing of the ‘how’ between experts is an excellent way to propagate the appropriate knowledge needed to bolster our defenses quickly and efficiently.”

Dave Cundiff, CISO, Cyvatar:

“These types of activity are critical to our success as defenders against attack.  The attackers only have to be right once, where the defenders have to be right always.  The more information which flows between groups the better to be able to respond more effectively against emerging attacks.  The only drawbacks are the ability of misdirection, or red herrings creating noise which is difficult to reduce once created.  As long as the program takes into consideration the curation of the data as well as the sharing of information, this could be a wonderfully helpful approach between the two groups.”