A top Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) official emphasized today that CISA can’t do its job as the nation’s cyber defense agency without the help from industry and academia.
“We’re busy keeping the lights on, we’re busy building out this technology and responding to our statutory responsibility through Congress to get it done,” CISA’s Associate Director for Mission Engineering David Carroll said during a keynote address at the TECH YEAH Conference in Morgantown, W.Va. “Why do we need collaboration? We can’t do our job without it.”
Carroll highlighted that collaboration is key when it comes to the cyber threats the U.S. faces every day.
“Over the summer, we’ve had various threats; you’ve seen them in the news, you’ve heard the term Volt Typhoon,” he continued, “Or are you seeing healthcare systems being ransomwared and they’re coming this close to loss of life, because we’re having to divert ambulances – that’s happened in several states.”
“This is serious. This is the nature of why we need collaboration with our technology environment,” he added. “That can take many forms. A lot of folks here are businesses, are integrators, are technology providers, are innovators, are academic intermediaries. We need all of you.”
Carroll said that collaboration will further innovation at the agency, and highlighted that CISA is still working on aspects of collaborative communication through the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) and other venues.
“What I would like to do is ask you all to bring us ideas on that. What do you want to see in the company,” Carrol asked the audience. “What’s new? Because it’s such a wide berth. We can somewhat tailor things to our Federal counterparts because we meet with them directly, but to be of service to all of you and to collaborate with you we need support from you.”
“Whether it’s JCDC or you’re working with us as an integrator or you’re working with us on the technology side, we want to hear what makes sense,” he said. “It’s going to be different for different sectors. I’ve worked in financial services; that’s different from energy, that’s different than healthcare. You have different regulations, you have different authorities, and we respect that.”
CISA announced it will begin rolling out its new Joint Collaborative Environment (JCE) last July, which serves as an information-sharing environment for synthesizing and analyzing data related to cybersecurity risks.
JCE is part of the development of CISA’s Cyber Analytic and Data System (CADS), which is a part of the cyber agency’s EINSTEIN modernization effort.
