The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released its 2022 Year in Review report this week, highlighting the agency’s increased collaboration with industry partners.
Notably, CISA’s Joint Cybersecurity Defense Collaborative (JCDC) – established by Congress in 2021 – celebrated its first year of operation in 2022 and grew its membership exponentially. The JCDC aims to reduce cyber risk through continuous operational collaboration between trusted partners in the public and private sectors.
According to the report, the JCDC has formed relationships with over 150 Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) worldwide and includes representation from nearly all the 16 critical infrastructure sectors.
“As one of the youngest agencies in the Federal government, we’ve grown significantly each year in capability and capacity, collaborating with our myriad of partners to reduce risk to the cyber and physical infrastructure Americans rely on every hour of every day,” CISA Director Jen Easterly said in a press release. “2022 has been an especially productive year for our team and our partnerships and we look forward to continuing this momentum into 2023.”
Another area where CISA increased its collaboration with industry partners in 2022 is through its Cybersecurity Advisory Committee (CSAC) meeting. The CSAC is a Federal advisory committee comprised of 22 private sector leaders across a variety of professions and communities.
According to the report, the committee held four quarterly meetings and 94 subcommittee meetings and provided Easterly with 53 recommendations to better address emerging cybersecurity threats in fiscal year 2022.
Additionally, the new Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) engaged industry partners to review and assess significant cybersecurity events. The board released its first report in July on the vulnerabilities in the Log4j software library.
CISA’s year-end report reveals that the CSRB “engaged with nearly 80 organizations and individuals to gather insights, inform findings, and develop 19 actionable recommendations for government and industry to address the continued risks posed by vulnerabilities in the Log4j open-source software library.”
While these are just some of the ways CISA increased its collaboration with industry in 2022, the agency said the report’s highlights “reflect an environment of trust, transparency, and open communication the agency has built with its partners over the past four years.”
